But we'd better keep it on a friendly basis," said Philip.

"You'd better," said Rearden and walked away.

Men who worship pain-thought Rearden, staring at the image of

the enemies he had never been able to understand-they're men who

worship pain. It seemed monstrous, yet peculiarly devoid of

importance. He felt nothing. It was like trying to summon emotion

toward inanimate objects, toward refuse sliding down a

mountainside to crush him. One could flee from the slide or build

retaining walls against it or be crushed -but one could not grant any

anger, indignation or moral concern to the senseless motions of the

un-living; no, worse, he thought-the antiliving.

The same sense of detached unconcern remained with him while

he sat in a Philadelphia courtroom and watched men perform the

motions which were to grant him his divorce. He watched them utter

mechanical generalities, recite vague phrases of fraudulent evidence,

play an intricate game of stretching words to convey no facts and no

meaning. He had paid them to do it-he whom the law permitted no

other way to gain his freedom, no right to state the facts and plead

the truth-the law which delivered his fate, not to objective rules

objectively defined, but to the arbitrary mercy of a judge with a

wizened face and a look of empty cunning.