Atlas Shrugged

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years—as, in her lonely evenings by the side of her phonograph, they had. The austerity of Judge
Narragansett's white-haired figure reminded her that she had once heard him described as a marble
statue—a blindfolded marble statue; it was the kind of figure that had vanished from the courtrooms of
the country when the gold coins had vanished from the country's hands.
"You have belonged here for a long time, Miss Taggart," said Midas Mulligan. "This was not the way we
expected you to come, but—welcome home."
No!—she wanted to answer, but heard herself answering softly, "Thank you."
"Dagny, how many years is it going to take you to learn to be yourself?” It was Ellis Wyatt, grasping her
elbow, leading her to a chair, grinning at her look of helplessness, at the struggle between a smile and a
tightening resistance in her face. "Don't pretend that you don't understand us. You do."
"We never make assertions, Miss Taggart," said Hugh Akston. "That is the moral crime peculiar to our
enemies. We do not tell—we show.
We do not claim—we prove. It is not your obedience that we seek to win, but your rational conviction.
You have seen all the elements of our secret. The conclusion is now yours to draw—we can help you to
name it, but not to accept it—the sight, the knowledge and the acceptance must be yours."
"I feel as if I know it," she answered simply, "and more: I feel as if I've always known it, but never found
it, and now I'm afraid, not afraid to hear it, just afraid that it's coming so close."
Akston smiled. "What does this look like to you, Miss Taggart?" He pointed around the room.
"This?" She laughed suddenly, looking at the faces of the men against the golden sunburst of rays filling
the great windows. "This looks like . . . You know, I never hoped to see any of you again, I wondered at
times how much I'd give for just one more glimpse or one more word—and now—now this is like that
dream you imagine in childhood, when you think that some day, in heaven, you will see those great
departed whom you had not seen on earth, and you choose, from all the past centuries, the great men
you would like to meet."
"Well, that's one clue to the nature of our secret," said Akston.
"Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be left waiting for us in our graves—or
whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth."
"I know," she whispered.
"And if you met those great men in heaven," asked Ken Danagger, "what would you want to say to
them?"
"Just . . . just 'hello,' I guess."
"That's not all," said Danagger. "There's something you'd want to hear from them. I didn't know it, either,
until I saw him for the first time"—he pointed to Galt—"and he said it to me, and then I knew what it was
that I had missed all my life. Miss Taggart, you'd want them to look at you and to say, 'Well done’ " She
dropped her head and nodded silently, head down, not to let him see the sudden spurt of tears to her
eyes. "All right, then: Well done, Dagny!—well done—too well—and now it's time for you to rest from
that burden which none of us should ever have had to carry."