Free Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

neon sign above them, saying: Rearden Life.
    He turned sharply and walked on. As the road came closer to his house, he noticed that his steps were slowing down and that something was ebbing away from his mood. He felt a dim reluctance to enter his home, which he did not want to feel. No, he thought, not tonight; they’ll understand it, tonight. But he did not know, he had never defined, what it was that he wanted them to understand.
    He saw lights in the windows of the living room, when he approached his house. The house stood on a hill, rising before him like a big white bulk; it looked naked, with a few semi-colonial pillars for reluctant ornament; it had the cheerless look of a nudity not worth revealing.
    He was not certain whether his wife noticed him when he entered the living room. She sat by the fireplace, talking, the curve of her arm floating in graceful emphasis of her words. He heard a small break in her voice, and thought that she had seen him, but she did not look up and her sentence went on smoothly; he could not be certain.
    “—but it’s just that a man of culture is bored with the alleged wonders of purely material ingenuity,” she was saying. “He simply refuses to get excited about plumbing.”
    Then she turned her head, looked at Rearden in the shadows across the long room, and her arms spread gracefully, like two swan necks by her sides.
    “Why, darling,” she said in a bright tone of amusement, “isn’t it too early to come home? Wasn’t there some slag to sweep or tuyeres to polish?”
    They all turned to him—his mother, his brother Philip and Paul Larkin, their old friend.
    “I’m sorry,” he answered. “I know I’m late.”
    “Don’t say you’re sorry,” said his mother. “You could have telephoned.” He looked at her, trying vaguely to remember something. “You promised to be here for dinner tonight.”
    “Oh, that’s right, I did. I’m sorry. But today at the mills, we poured—” He stopped; he did not know what made him unable to utter the one thing he had come home to say; he added only, “It’s just that I . . . forgot.”
    “That’s what Mother means,” said Philip.
    “Oh, let him get his bearings, he’s not quite here yet, he’s still at the mills,” his wife said gaily. “Do take your coat off, Henry.”
    Paul Larkin was looking at him with the devoted eyes of an inhibited dog. “Hello, Paul,” said Rearden. “When did you get in?”
    “Oh, I just hopped down on the five thirty-five from New York.” Larkin was smiling in gratitude for the attention.
    “Trouble?”
    “Who hasn’t got trouble these days?” Larkin’s smile became resigned, to indicate that the remark was merely philosophical. “But no, no special trouble this time. I just thought I’d drop in to see you.”
    His wife laughed. “You’ve disappointed him, Paul.” She turned to Rearden. “Is it an inferiority complex or a superiority one, Henry? Do you believe that nobody can want to see you just for your own sake, or do you believe that nobody can get along without your help?”
    He wanted to utter an angry denial, but she was smiling at him as if this were merely a conversational joke, and he had no capacity for the sort of conversations which were not supposed to be meant, so he did not answer. He stood looking at her, wondering about the things he had never been able to understand.
    Lillian Rearden was generally regarded as a beautiful woman. She had a tall, graceful body, the kind that looked well in high-waisted gowns of the Empire style, which she made it a practice to wear. Her exquisite profile belonged to a cameo of the same period: its pure, proud lines and the lustrous, light brown waves of her hair, worn with classical simplicity, suggested an austere, imperial beauty. But when she turned full-face, people experienced a small shock of disappointment. Her face was not beautiful. The eyes were the flaw: they were vaguely pale, neither quite gray nor brown, lifelessly