In the chapter on “The Plot-Theme” in The Art of Fiction, Ayn Rand says:

My heroes in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Roark and Galt, hold no contradictory values; it is through their friends, or the woman they love, that they are put into inner conflicts. The main line of the inner conflict of each concerns his (proper) love for a woman who, having not yet reached his level, is in some way still tied to the conventional world. Through her, the hero is throw into conflict with a world in which he now has something at stake. In the case of Roark and Dominique, the fault is Dominique’s; she is guilty of holding a mistaken, though not irrational, philosophy. Once she comes to hold the right philosophy, there is no clash, and the hero’s two values, love and career, coincide.

That passage reminded me of a rather funny remark that Paul made many months ago. Although I no longer remember the particulars, we were discussing some conflict of mine about which he had some definite view. After a pause in the conversion, he said, still in a very serious tone of voice, “You know, a common theme in both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged is that the woman went back and forth, but the man was right all along.”