The Early Ayn Rand Read Free Page A

ones (I believe he was exiled to Siberia) I do not know. But, either way, it is easy to imagine that alone in a new country, on the threshold of a new life, she should be drawn to focus as a kind of farewell on the man she loved and had now lost forever—or, more exactly, to focus on her own feeling for that man and loss.
    —L. P.

The Husband I Bought
    I should not have written this story. If I did it all—I did it only by keeping silent. I went through tortures, such as no other woman on earth, perhaps just to keep silent. And now—I speak. I must not have written my secret. But I have a hope. My one and only, and last hope. And I have no time before me. When life is dead and you have nothing left on your way—who can blame you for taking a last chance, a poor little chance . . . before the end? And so I write my story.
    I loved Henry. I love him. It is the only thing I know and I can say about myself. It is the only thing, that was my life. There is no person on earth that has never been in love. But love can go beyond all limits and bounds. Love can go beyond all consciousness, beyond your very soul.
    I never think of how I met him. It has no importance for me. I had to meet him and I did. I never think of how and when I began to love him or how I realized that he loved me. The only thing I know is that two words only were written on my life: “Henry Stafford.”
    He was tall and slim, and beautiful, too beautiful. He was intensely ambitious and never made a step to realize it. He had an immense, indefinite longing and did not trouble himself to think about it. He was the most perfectly refined and brilliant man, whom society admired and who laughed at society. A little lazy, very skeptical, indifferent to everything. Haughty and self-conceited for himself—gracious and ironical for everybody.
    In our little town Henry Stafford was, of course, the aim and target of all the girls and “homemade” vamps. He flirted openly with everyone; that made them all furious.
    His father had left him a big business. He managed it just enough to have the necessary money and the least trouble possible. He treated his business with the same smile of perfect politeness and perfect indifference with which he spoke to our society ladies or read a popular best-seller, from the middle.
    Mr. Barnes, an old lawyer and a friend of mine, said once, with that thoughtful, indefinite look afar that was so characteristic to him: “That impossible man . . . I could envy the girl he shall love. I would pity the one he will marry.”
    For the moment, I could have been envied by Mr. Barnes, and not by Mr. Barnes only: Henry Stafford loved me. I was twenty-one then, just graduated from one of the best colleges. I had come to live in my little native town, in the beautiful estate that belonged to me after my parents’ death. It was a big, luxurious house, with a wonderful old garden, the best in the town. I had a considerable fortune and no near relatives at all. I was accustomed to ruling my existence quietly and firmly myself.
    I tell the whole truth here, so I must tell that I was beautiful. And I was clever, I knew it; you always know it when you are. I was considered a “brilliant girl,” “a girl with a great future” by everybody in our society, though they did not like me too much, for I was a little too willful and resolute.
    I loved Henry Stafford. It was the only thing I ever understood in my life. It was my life. I knew I would never have another one, never could have. And I never did. Perhaps you should not love a human being like this. I cannot tell and I will not listen, if someone tells me you should not. I cannot listen: it was my whole life.
    Henry Stafford loved me. He loved me seriously. It was the first thing he did not smile at in his life.
    “I did not know I would be so helpless before love,” he said sometimes. “It was impossible, that you would not be mine, Irene. I must always have the things I wish, and it is