Atlas Shrugged

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 "I need you," he wailed softly. "Fm all alone. You're not like the others. I believe in you. I trust you.
What has all that money and fame and business and struggle given me? You're all I have . . . "
She stood without moving and the direction of her glance, lowered to look down at him, was the only
form of recognition she gave him.
The things he said about his suffering were lies, she thought; but the suffering was real; he was a man torn
by some continual anguish, which he seemed unable to tell her, but which, perhaps, she could learn to
understand. She still owed him this much—she thought, with the grayness of a sense of duty—in payment
for the position he had given her, which, perhaps, was all he had to give, she owed him an effort to
understand him.
It was strange to feel, in the days that followed, that she had become a stranger to herself, a stranger
who had nothing to want or to seek. In place of a love made by the brilliant fire of hero worship, she was
left with the gnawing drabness of pity. In place of the men she had struggled to find, men who fought for
their goals and refused to suffer—she was left with a man whose suffering was his only claim to value and
his only offer in exchange for her life. But it made no difference to her any longer. The one who was she,
had looked with eagerness at the turn of every corner ahead; the passive stranger who had taken her
place, was like all the over groomed people around her, the people who said that they were adult
because they did not try to think or to desire.
But the stranger was still haunted by a ghost who was herself, and the ghost had a mission to
accomplish. She had to learn to understand the things that had destroyed her. She had to know, and she
lived with a sense of ceaseless waiting. She had to know, even though she felt that the headlight was
closer and in the moment of knowledge she would be struck by the wheels.
What do you want of me?—was the question that kept beating in her mind as a clue. What do you want
of me?—she kept crying soundlessly, at dinner tables, in drawing rooms, on sleepless nights— crying it
to Jim and those who seemed to share his secret, to Balph Eubank, to Dr. Simon Pritchett—what do you
want of me? She did not ask it aloud; she knew that they would not answer. What do you want of
me?—she asked, feeling as if she were running, but no way were open to escape. What do you want of
me?—she asked, looking at the whole long torture of her marriage that had not lasted the full span of one
year.
"What do you want of me?" she asked aloud—and saw that she was sitting at the table in her dining
room, looking at Jim, at his feverish face, and at a drying stain of water on the table.
She did not know how long a span of silence had stretched between them, she was startled by her own
voice and by the--question she had not intended to utter. She did not expect him to understand it, he had
never seemed to understand much simpler queries—and she shook her head, struggling to recapture the
reality of the present.
She was startled to see him looking at her with a touch of derision, as if he were mocking her estimate of
his understanding.
"Love," he answered.
She felt herself sagging with hopelessness, in the face of that answer which was at once so simple and so
meaningless.