The Fountainhead

1.

TO HOLD his fists closed tight, as if the skin of his palms had grown fast to the steel he clasped — to keep his feet steady, pressed down hard, the flat rock an upward thrust against his soles — not to feel the existence of his body, but only a few clots of tension: his knees, his wrists, his shoulders and the drill he held — to feel the drill trembling in a long convulsive shudder — to feel his stomach trembling, his lungs trembling, the straight lines of the stone ledges before him dissolving into jagged streaks of trembling — to feel the drill and his body gathered into the single will of pressure, that a shaft of steel might sink slowly into granite — this was all of life for Howard Roark, as it had been in the days of the two months behind him.

He stood on the hot stone in the sun. His face was scorched to bronze. His shirt stuck in long, damp patches to his back. The quarry rose about him in flat shelves breaking against one another. It was a world without curves, grass or soil, a simplified world of stone planes, sharp edges and angles. The stone had not been made by patient centuries welding the sediment of winds and tides; it had come from a molten mass cooling slowly at unknown depth; it had been flung, forced out of the earth, and it still held the shape of violence against the violence of the men on its ledges.

The straight planes stood witness to the force of each cut; the drive of each blow had run in an unswerving line; the stone had cracked open in unbending resistance. Drills bored forward with a low, continuous drone, the tension of the sound cutting through nerves, through skulls, as if the quivering tools were shattering slowly both the stone and the men who held them.

He liked the work. He felt at times as if it were a match of wrestling between his muscles and the granite. He was very tired at night. He liked the emptiness of his body's exhaustion.

Each evening he walked the two miles from the quarry to the little town where the workers lived. The earth of the woods he crossed was soft and warm under his feet; it was strange, after a day spent on the granite ridges; he smiled as at a new pleasure, each evening, and looked down to watch his feet crushing a surface that responded, gave way and conceded faint prints to be left behind.

There was a bathroom in the garret of the house where he roomed; the paint had peeled off the floor long ago and the naked boards were gray-white. He lay in the tub for a long time and let the cool water soak the stone dust out of his skin. He let his head hang back, on the edge of the tub, his eyes closed. The greatness of the weariness was its own relief: it allowed no sensation but the slow pleasure of the tension leaving his muscles.

He ate his dinner in a kitchen, with other quarry workers. He sat alone at a table in a corner; the fumes of the grease, crackling eternally on the vast gas range, hid the rest of the room in a sticky haze. He ate little. He drank a great deal of water; the cold, glittering liquid in a clean glass was intoxicating.

He slept in a small wooden cube under the roof. The boards of the ceiling slanted down over his bed. When it rained, he could hear the burst of each drop against the roof, and it took an effort to realize why he did not feel the rain beating against his body.

Sometimes, after dinner, he would walk into the woods that began behind the house. He would stretch down on the ground, on his stomach, his elbows planted before him, his hands propping his chin, and he would watch the patterns of veins on the green blades of grass under his face; he would blow at them and watch the blades tremble then stop again. He would roll over on his back and lie still, feeling the warmth of the earth under him. Far above, the leaves were still green, but it was a thick, compressed green, as if the color were condensed in one last effort before the dusk coming to dissolve it. The leaves hung without motion against a sky of polished lemon yellow; its luminous pallor emphasized that its light was failing. He pressed his hips, his back into the earth under him; the earth resisted, but it gave way; it was a silent victory; he felt a dim, sensuous pleasure in the muscles of his legs.

Sometimes, not often, he sat up and did not move for a long time; then he smiled, the slow smile of an executioner watching a victim. He thought of his days going by, of the buildings he could have been doing, should have been doing and, perhaps, never would be doing again. He watched the pain's unsummoned appearance with a cold, detached curiosity; he said to himself: Well, here it is again. He waited to see how long it would last. It gave him a strange, hard pleasure to watch his fight against it, and he could forget that it was his own suffering; he could smile in contempt, not realizing that he smiled at his own agony. Such moments were rare. But when they came, he felt as he did in the quarry: that he had to drill through granite, that he had to drive a wedge and blast the thing within him which persisted in calling to his pity.

Dominique Francon lived alone, that summer, in the great Colonial mansion of her father's estate, three miles beyond the quarry town. She received no visitors. An old caretaker and his wife were the only human beings she saw, not too often and merely of necessity; they lived some distance from the mansion, near the stables; the caretaker attended to the grounds and the horses; his wife attended to the house and cooked Dominique's meals.

The meals were served with the gracious severity the old woman had learned in the days when Dominique's mother lived and presided over the guests in that great dining room. At night Dominique found her solitary place at the table laid out as for a formal banquet, the candles lighted, the tongues of yellow flame standing motionless like the shining metal spears of a guard of honor. The darkness stretched the room into a hall, the big windows rose like a flat colonnade of sentinels. A shallow crystal bowl stood in a pool of light in the center of the long table, with a single water lily spreading white petals about a heart yellow like a drop of candle fire.

The old woman served the meal in unobtrusive silence, and disappeared from the house as soon as she could afterward. When Dominique walked up the stairs to her bedroom, she found the fragile lace folds of her nightgown laid out on the bed. In the morning she entered her bathroom and found water in the sunken bathtub, the hyacinth odor of her bath sails, the aquamarine tiles polished, shining under her feet, her huge towels spread out like snowdrifts to swallow her body — yet she heard no steps and felt no living presence in the house. The old woman's treatment of Dominique had the same reverent caution with which she handled the pieces of Venetian glass in the drawing-room cabinets. Dominique had spent so many summers and winters, surrounding herself with people in order to feel alone, that the experiment of actual solitude was an enchantment to her and a betrayal into a weakness she had never allowed herself: the weakness of enjoying it. She stretched her arms and let them drop lazily, feeling a sweet, drowsy heaviness above her elbows, as after a first drink. She was conscious of her summer dresses, she felt her knees, her thighs encountering the faint resistance of cloth when she moved, and it made her conscious not of the cloth, but of her knees and thighs.

The house stood alone amidst vast grounds, and the woods stretched beyond; there were no neighbors for miles. She rode on horseback down long, deserted roads, down hidden paths leading nowhere. Leaves glittered in the sun and twigs snapped in the wind of her flying passage. She caught her breath at times from the sudden feeling that something magnificent and deadly would meet her beyond the next turn of the road; she could give no identity to what she expected, she could not say whether it was a sight, a person or an event; she knew only its quality — the sensation of a defiling pleasure.

Sometimes she started on foot from the house and walked for miles, setting herself no goal and no hour of return. Cars passed her on the road; the people of the quarry town knew her and bowed to her; she was considered the chatelaine of the countryside, as her mother had been long ago. She turned off the road into the woods and walked on, her arms swinging loosely, her head thrown back, watching the tree tops. She saw clouds swimming behind the leaves; it looked as if a giant tree before her were moving, slanting, ready to fall and crush her; she stopped; she waited, her head thrown back, her throat pulled tight; she felt as if she wanted to be crushed. Then she shrugged and went on. She flung thick branches impatiently out of her way and let them scratch her bare arms. She walked on long after she was exhausted, she drove herself forward against the weariness of her muscles. Then she fell down on her back and lay still, her arms and legs flung out like a cross on the ground, breathing in release, feeling empty and flattened, feeling the weight of the air like a pressure against her breasts.

Some mornings, when she awakened in her bedroom, she heard the explosions of blasting at the granite quarry. She stretched, her arms flung back above her head on the white silk pillow, and she listened. It was the sound of destruction and she liked it.

Because the sun was too hot, that morning, and she knew it would be hotter at the granite quarry, because she wanted to see no one and knew she would face a gang of workers, Dominique walked to the quarry. The thought of seeing it on that blazing day was revolting; she enjoyed the prospect.

When she came out of the woods to the edge of the great stone bowl, she felt as if she were thrust into an execution chamber filled with scalding steam. The heat did not come from the sun, but from that broken cut in the earth, from the reflectors of flat ridges. Her shoulders, her head, her back, exposed to the sky, seemed cool while she felt the hot breath of the stone rising up her legs, to her chin, to her nostrils. The air shimmered below, sparks of fire shot through the granite; she thought the stone was stirring, melting, running in white trickles of lava. Drills and hammers cracked the still weight of the air. It was obscene to see men on the shelves of the furnace. They did not look like workers, they looked like a chain gang serving an unspeakable penance for some unspeakable crime. She could not turn away.

She stood, as an insult to the place below. Her dress — the color of water, a pale green-blue, too simple and expensive, its pleats exact like edges of glass — her thin heels planted wide apart on the boulders, the smooth helmet of her hair, the exaggerated fragility of her body against the sky — flaunted the fastidious coolness of the gardens and drawing rooms from which she came.

She looked down. Her eyes stopped on the orange hair of a man who raised his head and looked at her.

She stood very still, because her first perception was not of sight, but of touch: the consciousness, not of a visual presence, but of a slap in the face. She held one hand awkwardly away from her body, the fingers spread wide on the air, as against a wall. She knew that she could not move until he permitted her to.

She saw his mouth and the silent contempt in the shape of his mouth; the planes of his gaunt, hollow cheeks; the cold, pure brilliance of the eyes that had no trace of pity. She knew it was the most beautiful face she would ever see, because it was the abstraction of strength made visible. She felt a convulsion of anger, of protest, of resistance — and of pleasure. He stood looking up at her; it was not a glance, but an act of ownership. She thought she must let her face give him the answer he deserved. But she was looking, instead, at the stone dust on his burned arms, the wet shirt clinging to his ribs, the lines of his long legs. She was thinking of those statues of men she had always sought; she was wondering what he would look like naked. She saw him looking at her as if he knew that. She thought she had found an aim in life — a sudden, sweeping hatred for that man.

She was first to move. She turned and walked away from him. She saw the superintendent of the quarry on the path ahead, and she waved. The superintendent rushed forward to meet her. "Why, Miss Francon!" he cried. "Why, how do you do, Miss Francon!"

She hoped the words were heard by the man below. For the first time in her life, she was glad of being Miss Francon, glad of her father's position and possessions, which she had always despised. She thought suddenly that the man below was only a common worker, owned by the owner of this place, and she was almost the owner of this place.

The superintendent stood before her respectfully. She smiled and said:

"I suppose I'll inherit the quarry some day, so I thought I should show some interest in it once in a while."

The superintendent preceded her down the path, displayed his domain to her, explained the work. She followed him far to the other side of the quarry; she descended to the dusty green dell of the work sheds; she inspected the bewildering machinery. She allowed a convincingly sufficient time to elapse. Then she walked back, alone, down the edge of the granite bowl.

She saw him from a distance as she approached. He was working. She saw one strand of red hair that fell over his face and swayed with the trembling of the drill. She thought — hopefully — that the vibrations of the drill hurt him, hurt his body, everything inside his body.

When she was on the rocks above him, he raised his head and looked at her; she had not caught him noticing her approach; he looked up as if he expected her to be there, as if he knew she would be back. She saw the hint of a smile, more insulting than words. He sustained the insolence of looking straight at her, he would not move, he would not grant the concession of turning away — of acknowledging that he had no right to look at her in such manner. He had not merely taken that right, he was saying silently that she had given it to him.

She turned sharply and walked on, down the rocky slope, away from the quarry.

It was not his eyes, not his mouth that she remembered, but his hands. The meaning of that day seemed held in a single picture she had noted: the simple instant of his one hand resting against granite. She saw it again: his fingertips pressed to the stone, his long fingers continuing the straight lines of the tendons that spread in a fan from his wrist to his knuckles. She thought of him, but the vision present through all her thoughts was the picture of that hand on the granite. It frightened her; she could not understand it.

He's only a common worker, she thought, a hired man doing a convict's labor. She thought of that, sitting before the glass shelf of her dressing table. She looked at the crystal objects spread before her; they were like sculptures in ice — they proclaimed her own cold, luxurious fragility; and she thought of his strained body, of his clothes drenched in dust and sweat, of his hands. She stressed the contrast, because it degraded her. She leaned back, closing her eyes. She thought of the many distinguished men whom she had refused. She thought of the quarry worker. She thought of being broken — not by a man she admired, but by a man she loathed. She let her head fall down on her arm; the thought left her weak with pleasure.

For two days she made herself believe that she would escape from this place; she found old travel folders in her trunk, studied them, chose the resort, the hotel and the particular room in that hotel, selected the train she would take, the boat and the number of the stateroom. She found a vicious amusement in doing that, because she knew she would not take this trip she wanted; she would go back to the quarry.

She went back to the quarry three days later. She stopped over the ledge where he worked and she stood watching him openly. When he raised his head, she did not turn away. Her glance told him she knew the meaning of her action, but did not respect him enough to conceal it. His glance told her only that he had expected her to come. He bent over his drill and went on with his work. She waited. She wanted him to look up. She knew that he knew it. He would not look again.

She stood, watching his hands, waiting for the moments when he touched stone. She forgot the drill and the dynamite. She liked to think of the granite being broken by his hands.

She heard the superintendent calling her name, hurrying to her up the path. She turned to him when he approached.

"I like to watch the men working," she explained.

"Yes, quite a picture, isn't it?" the superintendent agreed. "There's the train starting over there with another load."

She was not watching the train. She saw the man below looking at her, she saw the insolent hint of amusement tell her that he knew she did not want him to look at her now. She turned her head away. The superintendent's eyes traveled over the pit and stopped on the man below them.

"Hey, you down there!" he shouted. "Are you paid to work or to gape?"

The man bent silently over his drill. Dominique laughed aloud.

The superintendent said: "It's a tough crew we got down here, Miss Francon ... Some of 'em even with jail records."

"Has that man a jail record?" she asked, pointing down.

"Well, I couldn't say. Wouldn't know them all by sight."

She hoped he had. She wondered whether they whipped convicts nowadays. She hoped they did. At the thought of it, she felt a sinking gasp such as she had felt in childhood, in dreams of falling down a long stairway; but she felt the sinking in her stomach.

She turned brusquely and left the quarry.

She came back many days later. She saw him, unexpectedly, on a flat stretch of stone before her, by the side of the path. She stopped short. She did not want to come too close. It was strange to see him before her, without the defense and excuse of distance.

He stood looking straight at her. Their understanding was too offensively intimate, because they had never said a word to each other. She destroyed it by speaking to him.

"Why do you always stare at me?" she asked sharply.

She thought with relief that words were the best means of estrangement. She had denied everything they both knew by naming it. For a moment, he stood silently, looking at her. She felt terror at the thought that he would not answer, that he would let his silence tell her too clearly why no answer was necessary. But he answered. He said:

"For the same reason you've been staring at me."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"If you didn't, you'd be much more astonished and much less angry, Miss Francon."

"So you know my name?"

"You've been advertising it loudly enough."

"You'd better not be insolent. I can have you fired at a moment's notice, you know."

He turned his head, looking for someone among the men below. He asked: "Shall I call the superintendent?"

She smiled contemptuously.

"No, of course not. It would be too simple. But since you know who I am, it would be better if you stopped looking at me when I come here. It might be misunderstood."

"I don't think so."

She turned away. She had to control her voice. She looked over the stone ledges. She asked: "Do you find it very hard to work here?"

"Yes. Terribly."

"Do you get tired?"

"Inhumanly."

"How does that feel?"

"I can hardly walk when the day's ended. I can't move my arms at night. When I lie in bed, I can count every muscle in my body to the number of separate, different pains."

She knew suddenly that he was not telling her about himself; he was speaking of her, he was saying the things she wanted to hear and telling her that he knew why she wanted to hear these particular sentences.

She felt anger, a satisfying anger because it was cold and certain. She felt also a desire to let her skin touch his; to let the length of her bare arm press against the length of his; just that; the desire went no further.,

She was asking calmly:

"You don't belong here, do you? You don't talk like a worker. What were you before?"

"An electrician. A plumber. A plasterer. Many things."

"Why are you working here?"

"For the money you're paying me, Miss Francon."

She shrugged. She turned and walked away from him up the path. She knew that he was looking after her. She did not glance back. She continued on her way through the quarry, and she left it as soon as she could, but she did not go back down the path where she would have to see him again.

2.

DOMINIQUE awakened each morning to the prospect of a day made significant by the existence of a goal to be reached: the goal of making it a day on which she would not go to the quarry.

She had lost the freedom she loved. She knew that a continuous struggle against the compulsion of a single desire was compulsion also, but it was the form she preferred to accept. It was the only manner in which she could let him motivate her life. She found a dark satisfaction in pain — because that pain came from him.

She went to call on he distant neighbors, a wealthy, gracious family who had bored her in New York; she had visited no one all summer. They were astonished and delighted to see her. She sat among a group of distinguished people at the edge of a swimming pool. She watched the air of fastidious elegance around her. She watched the deference of these people's manner when they spoke to her. She glanced at her own reflection in the pool: she looked more delicately austere than any among them.

And she thought, with a vicious thrill, of what these people would do if they read her mind in this moment; if they knew that she was thinking of a man in a quarry, thinking of his body with a sharp intimacy as one does not think of another's body but only of one's own. She smiled; the cold purity of her face prevented them from seeing the nature of that smile. She came back again to visit these people — for the same of such thoughts in the presence of their respect for her.

One evening, a guest offered to drive her back to her house. He was an eminent young poet. He was pale and slender; he had a soft, sensitive mouth, and eyes hurt by the whole universe. She had not noticed the wistful attention with which he had watched her for a long time. As they drove through the twilight she saw him leaning hesitantly closer to her. She heard his voice whispering the pleading, incoherent things she had heard from many men. He stopped the car. She felt his lips pressed to her shoulder.

She jerked away from him. She sat still for an instant, because she would have to brush against him if she moved and she could not bear to touch him. Then she flung the door open, she leaped out, she slammed the door behind her as if the crash of sound could wipe him out of existence, and she ran blindly. She stopped running after a while, and she walked on shivering, walked down the dark road until she saw the roof line of her own house.

She stopped, looking about her with her first coherent thought of astonishment. Such incidents had happened to her often in the past; only then she had been amused; she had felt no revulsion; she had felt nothing.

She walked slowly across the lawn, to the house. On the stairs to her room she stopped. She thought of the man in the quarry. She thought, in clear, formed words, that the man in the quarry wanted her. She had known it before; she had known it with his first glance at her. But she had never stated the knowledge to herself.

She laughed. She looked about her, at the silent splendor of her house. The house made the words preposterous. She knew that would never happen to her. And she knew the kind of suffering she could impose on him.

For days she walked with satisfaction through the rooms of her house. It was her defense. She heard the explosions of blasting from the quarry and smiled.

But she felt too certain and the house was too safe. She felt a desire to underscore the safety by challenging it.

She chose the marble slab in front of the fireplace in her bedroom. She wanted it broken. She knelt, hammer in hand, and tried to smash the marble. She pounded it, her thin arm sweeping high over her head, crashing down with ferocious helplessness. She felt the pain in the bones of her arms, in her shoulder sockets. She succeeded in making a long scratch across the marble.

She went to the quarry. She saw him from a distance and walked straight to him.

"Hello," she said casually.

He stopped the drill. He leaned against a stone shelf. He answered:

"Hello."

"I have been thinking of you," she said softly, and stopped, then added, her voice flowing on in the same tone of compelling invitation, "because there's a bit of a dirty job to be done at my house. Would you like to make some extra money?"

"Certainly, Miss Francon."

"Will you come to my house tonight? The way to the servants' entrance is off Ridgewood Road. There's a marble piece at a fireplace that's broken and has to be replaced. I want you to take it out and order a new one made for me."

She expected anger and refusal. He asked:

"What time shall I come?"

"At seven o'clock. What are you paid here?"

"Sixty-two cents an hour."

"I'm sure you're worth that. I'm quite willing to pay you at the same rate. Do you know how to find my house?"

"No, Miss Francon."

"Just ask anyone in the village to direct you."

"Yes, Miss Francon."

She walked away, disappointed. She felt that their secret understanding was lost; he had spoken as if it were a simple job which she could have offered to any other workman. Then she felt the sinking gasp inside, that feeling of shame and pleasure which he always gave her: she realized that their understanding had been more intimate and flagrant than ever — in his natural acceptance of an unnatural offer; he had shown her how much he knew — by his lack of astonishment.

She asked her old caretaker and his wife to remain in the house that evening. Their diffident presence completed the picture of a feudal mansion. She heard the bell of the servants' entrance at seven o'clock. The old woman escorted him to the great front hall where Dominique stood on the landing of a broad stairway.

She watched him approaching, looking up at her. She held the pose long enough to let him suspect that it was a deliberate pose deliberately planned; she broke it at the exact moment before he could become certain of it. She said: "Good evening." Her voice was austerely quiet.

He did not answer, but inclined his head and walked on up the stairs toward her. He wore his work clothes and he carried a bag of tools. His movements had a swift, relaxed kind of energy that did not belong here, in her house, on the polished steps, between the delicate, rigid banisters. She had expected him to seem incongruous in her house; but it was the house that seemed incongruous around him.

She moved one hand, indicating the door of her bedroom. He followed obediently. He did not seem to notice the room when he entered. He entered it as if it were a workshop. He walked straight to the fireplace.

"There it is," she said, one finger pointing to the marble slab.

He said nothing. He knelt, took a thin metal wedge from his bag, held its point against the scratch on the slab, took a hammer and struck one blow. The marble split in a long, deep cut.

He glanced up at her. It was the look she dreaded, a look of laughter that could not be answered, because the laughter could not be seen, only felt. He said:

"Now it's broken and has to be replaced."

She asked calmly:

"Would you know what kind of marble this is and where to order another piece like it?"

"Yes, Miss Francon."

"Go ahead, then. Take it out."

"Yes, Miss Francon."

She stood watching him. It was strange to feel a senseless necessity to watch the mechanical process of the work as if her eyes were helping it. Then she knew that she was afraid to look at the room around them. She made herself raise her head.

She saw the shelf of her dressing table, its glass edge like a narrow green satin ribbon in the semidarkness, and the crystal containers; she saw a pair of white bedroom slippers, a pale blue towel on the floor by a mirror, a pair of stockings thrown over the arm of a chair; she saw the white satin cover of her bed. His shirt had damp stains and gray patches of stone dust; the dust made streaks on the skin of his arms. She felt as if each object in the room had been touched by him, as if the air were a heavy pool of water into which they had been plunged together, and the water that touched him carried the touch to her, to every object in the room. She wanted him to look up. He worked, without raising his head.

She approached him and stood silently over him. She had never stood so close to him before. She looked down at the smooth skin on the back of his neck; she could distinguish single threads of his hair. She glanced down at the tip of her sandal. It was there, on the floor, an inch away from his body; she needed but one movement, a very slight movement of her foot, to touch him. She made a step back.

He moved his head, but not to look up, only to pick another tool from the bag, and bent over his work again.

She laughed aloud. He stopped and glanced at her.

"Yes?" he asked.

Her face was grave, her voice gentle when she answered:

"Oh, I'm sorry. You might have thought that I was laughing at you. But I wasn't, of course."

She added:

"I didn't want to disturb you. I'm sure you're anxious to finish and get out of here. I mean, of course, because you must be tired. But then, on the other hand, I'm paying you by the hour, so it's quite all right if you stretch your time a little, if you want to make more out of it. There must be things you'd like to talk about."

"Oh, yes, Miss Francon."

"Well?"

"I think this is an atrocious fireplace."

"Really? This house was designed by my father."

"Yes, of course, Miss Francon."

"There's no point in your discussing the work of an architect."

"None at all."

"Surely we could choose some other subject."

"Yes, Miss Francon."

She moved away from him. She sat down on the bed, leaning back on straight arms, her legs crossed and pressed close together in a long, straight line. Her body, sagging limply from her shoulders, contradicted the inflexible precision of the legs; the cold austerity of her face contradicted the pose of her body.

He glanced at her occasionally, as he worked. He was speaking obediently. He was saying:

"I shall make certain to get a piece of marble of precisely the same quality, Miss Francon. It is very important to distinguish between the various kinds of marble. Generally speaking, there are three kinds. The white marbles, which are derived from the recrystallization of limestone, the onyx marbles which are chemical deposits of calcium carbonate, and the green marbles which consist mainly of hydrous magnesium silicate or serpentine. This last must not be considered as true marble. True marble is a metamorphic form of limestone, produced by heat and pressure. Pressure is a powerful factor. It leads to consequences which, once started, cannot be controlled."

"What consequences?" she asked, leaning forward.

"The recrystallization of the particles of limestone and the infiltration of foreign elements from the surrounding soil. These constitute the colored streaks which are to be found in most marbles. Pink marble is caused by the presence of manganese oxides, gray marble is due to carbonaceous matter, yellow marble is attributed to a hydrous oxide of iron. This piece here is, of course, white marble. There are a great many varieties of white marble. You should be very careful, Miss Francon ... "

She sat leaning forward, gathered into a dim black huddle; the lamp light fell on one hand she had dropped limply on her knees, palm up, the fingers half-closed, a thin edge of fire outlining each finger, the dark cloth of her dress making the hand too naked and brilliant.

" ... to make certain that I order a new piece of precisely the same quality. It would not be advisable, for instance, to substitute a piece of white Georgia marble which is not as fine-grained as the white marble of Alabama. This is Alabama marble. Very high grade. Very expensive."

He saw her hand close and drop down, out of the light. He continued his work in silence.

When he had finished, he rose, asking:

"Where shall I put the stone?"

"Leave it there. I'll have it removed."

"I'll order a new piece cut to measure and delivered to you C.O.D. Do you wish me to set it?"

"Yes, certainly. I'll let you know when it comes. How much do I owe you?" She glanced at a clock on her bedside table. "Let me see, you've been here three quarters of an hour. That's forty-eight cents." She reached for her bag, she took out the dollar bill, she handed it to him. "Keep the change," she said.

She hoped he would throw it back in her face. He slipped the bill into his pocket. He said:

"Thank you, Miss Francon."

He saw the edge of her long black sleeve trembling over her closed fingers.

"Good night," she said, her voice hollow in anger.

He bowed: "Good night, Miss Francon."

He turned and walked down the stairs, out of the house.

She stopped thinking of him. She thought of the piece of marble he had ordered. She waited for it to come, with the feverish intensity of a sudden mania; she counted the days; she watched the rare trucks on the road beyond the lawn.

She told herself fiercely that she merely wanted the marble to come; just that; nothing else, no hidden reasons; no reasons at all. It was a last, hysterical aftermath; she was free of everything else. The stone would come and that would be the end.

When the stone came, she barely glanced at it. The delivery truck had not left the grounds, when she was at her desk, writing a note on a piece of exquisite stationery. She wrote:

"The marble is here. I want it set tonight."

She sent her caretaker with the note to the quarry. She ordered it delivered to: "I don't know his name. The redheaded workman who was here."

The caretaker came back and brought her a scrap torn from a brown paper bag, bearing in pencil:

"You'll have it set tonight."

She waited, in the suffocating emptiness of impatience, at the window of her bedroom. The servants' entrance bell rang at seven o'clock. There was a knock at her door. "Come in," she snapped — to hide the strange sound of her own voice. The door opened and the caretaker's wife entered, motioning for someone to follow. The person who followed was a short, squat, middle-aged Italian with bow legs, a gold hoop in one ear and a frayed hat held respectfully in both hands.

"The man sent from the quarry, Miss Francon," said the caretaker's wife.

Dominique asked, her voice not a scream and not a question:

"Who are you?"

"Pasquale Orsini," the man answered obediently, bewildered.

"What do you want?"

"Well, I ... Well, Red down at the quarry said fireplace gotta be fixed, he said you wanta I fix her."

"Yes. Yes, of course," she said, rising. "I forgot. Go ahead."

She had to get out of the room. She had to run, not to be seen by anyone, not to be seen by herself if she could escape it.

She stopped somewhere in the garden and stood trembling, pressing her fists against her eyes. It was anger. It was a pure, single emotion that swept everything clean; everything but the terror under the anger; terror, because she knew that she could not go near the quarry now and that she would go.

It was early evening, many days later, when she went to the quarry. She returned on horseback from a long ride through the country, and she saw the shadows lengthening on the lawn; she knew that she could not live through another night. She had to get there before the workers left. She wheeled about. She rode to the quarry, flying, the wind cutting her cheeks.

He was not there when she reached the quarry. She knew at once that he was not there, even though the workers were just leaving and a great many of them were filing down the paths from the stone bowl. She stood, her lips tight, and she looked for him. But she knew that he had left.

She rode into the woods. She flew at random between walls of leaves that melted ahead in the gathering twilight. She stopped, broke a long, thin branch off a tree, tore the leaves off, and went on, using the flexible stick as a whip, lashing her horse to fly faster. She felt as if the speed would hasten the evening on, force the hours ahead to pass more quickly, let her leap across time to catch the coming morning before it came. And then she saw him walking alone on the path before her.

She tore ahead. She caught up with him and stopped sharply, the jolt throwing her forward then back like the release of a spring. He stopped.

They said nothing. They looked at each other. She thought that every silent instant passing was a betrayal; this wordless encounter was too eloquent, this recognition that no greeting was necessary.

She asked, her voice flat:

"Why didn't you come to set the marble?"

"I didn't think it would make any difference to you who came. Or did it, Miss Francon?"

She felt the words not as sounds, but as a blow flat against her mouth. The branch she held went up and slashed across his face. She started off in the sweep of the same motion.

Dominique sat at the dressing table in her bedroom. It was very late. There was no sound in the vast, empty house around her. The french windows of the bedroom were open on a terrace and there was no sound of leaves in the dark garden beyond.

The blankets on her bed were turned down, waiting for her, the pillow white against the tall, black windows. She thought she would try to sleep. She had not seen him for three days. She ran her hands over her head, the curves of her palms pressing against the smooth planes of hair. She pressed her fingertips, wet with perfume, to the hollows of her temples, and held them there for a moment; she felt relief in the cold, contracting bite of the liquid on her skin. A spilled drop of perfume remained on the glass of the dressing table, a drop sparkling like a gem and as expensive.

She did not hear the sound of steps in the garden. She heard them only when they rose up the stairs to the terrace. She sat up, frowning. She looked at the french windows.

He came in. He wore his work clothes, the dirty shirt with rolled sleeves, the trousers smeared with stone dust. He stood looking at her. There was no laughing understanding in his face. His face was drawn, austere in cruelty, ascetic in passion, the cheeks sunken, the lips pulled down, set tight. She jumped to her feet, she stood, her arms thrown back, her fingers spread apart. He did not move. She saw a vein of his neck rise, beating, and fall down again.

Then he walked to her. He held her as if his flesh had cut through hers and she felt the bones of his arms on the bones of her ribs, her legs jerked tight against his, his mouth on hers.

She did not know whether the jolt of terror shook her first and she thrust her elbows at his throat, twisting her body to escape, or whether she lay still in his arms, in the first instant, in the shock of feeling his skin against hers, the thing she had thought about, had expected, had never known to be like this, could not have known, because this was not part of living, but a thing one could not bear longer than a second.

She tried to tear herself away from him. The effort broke against his arms that had not felt it. Her fists beat against his shoulders, against his face. He moved one hand, took her two wrists, pinned them behind her, under his arm, wrenching her shoulder blades. She twisted her head back. She felt his lips on her breast. She tore herself free.

She fell back against the dressing table, she stood crouching, her hands clasping the edge behind her, her eyes wide, colorless, shapeless in terror. He was laughing. There was the movement of laughter on his face, but no sound. Perhaps he had released her intentionally. He stood, his legs apart, his arms hanging at his sides, letting her be more sharply aware of his body across the space between them than she had been in his arms. She looked at the door behind him, he saw the first hint of movement, no more than a thought of leaping toward that door. He extended his arm, not touching her, and fell back. Her shoulders moved faintly, rising. He took a step forward and her shoulders fell. She huddled lower, closer to the table. He let her wait. Then he approached. He lifted her without effort. She let her teeth sink into his hand and felt blood on the tip of her tongue. He pulled her head back and he forced her mouth open against his.

She fought like an animal. But she made no sound. She did not call for help. She heard the echoes of her blows in a gasp of his breath, and she knew that it was a gasp of pleasure. She reached for the lamp on the dressing table. He knocked the lamp out of her hand. The crystal burst to pieces in the darkness.

He had thrown her down on the bed and she felt the blood beating in her throat, in her eyes, the hatred, the helpless terror in her blood. She felt the hatred and his hands; his hands moving over her body, the hands that broke granite. She fought in a last convulsion. Then the sudden pain shot up, through her body, to her throat, and she screamed. Then she lay still.

It was an act that could be performed in tenderness, as a seal of love, or in contempt, as a symbol of humiliation and conquest. It could be the act of a lover or the act of a soldier violating an enemy woman. He did it as an act of scorn. Not as love, but as defilement. And this made her lie still and submit. One gesture of tenderness from him — and she would have remained cold, untouched by the thing done to her body. But the act of a master taking shameful, contemptuous possession of her was the kind of rapture she had wanted. Then she felt him shaking with the agony of a pleasure unbearable even to him, she knew that she had given that to him, that it came from her, from her body, and she bit her lips and she knew what he had wanted her to know.

He lay still across the bed, away from her, his head hanging back over the edge. She heard the slow, ending gasps of his breath. She lay on her back, as he had left her, not moving, her mouth open. She felt empty, light and flat.

She saw him get up. She saw his silhouette against the window. He went out, without a word or a glance at her. She noticed that, but it did not matter. She listened blankly to the sound of his steps moving away in the garden.

She lay still for a long time. Then she moved her tongue in her open mouth. She heard a sound that came from somewhere within her, and it was the dry, short, sickening sound of a sob, but she was not crying, her eyes were held paralyzed, dry and open. The sound became motion, a jolt running down her throat to her stomach. It flung her up, she stood awkwardly, bent over, her forearms pressed to her stomach. She heard the small table by the bed rattling in the darkness, and she looked at it, in empty astonishment that a table should move without reason. Then she understood that she was shaking. She was not frightened; it seemed foolish to shake like that, in short, separate jerks, like soundless hiccoughs. She thought she must take a bath. The need was unbearable, as if she had felt it for a long time. Nothing mattered, if only she would take a bath. She dragged her feet slowly to the door of her bathroom.

She turned the light on in the bathroom. She saw herself in a tall mirror. She saw the purple bruises left on her body by his mouth. She heard a moan muffled in her throat, not very loud. It was not the sight, but the sudden flash of knowledge. She knew that she would not take a bath. She knew that she wanted to keep the feeling of his body, the traces of his body on hers, knowing also what such a desire implied. She fell on her knees, clasping the edge of the bathtub. She could not make herself crawl over that edge. Her hands slipped, she lay still on the floor. The tiles were hard and cold under her body. She lay there till morning.

Roark awakened in the morning and thought that last night had been like a point reached, like a stop in the movement of his life. He was moving forward for the sake of such stops; like the moments when he had walked through the half-finished Heller house; like last night. In some unstated way, last night had been what building was to him; in some quality of reaction within him, in what it gave to his consciousness of existence.

They had been united in an understanding beyond the violence, beyond the deliberate obscenity of his action; had she meant less to him, he would not have taken her as he did; had he meant less to her, she would not have fought so desperately. The unrepeatable exultation was in knowing that they both understood this.

He went to the quarry and he worked that day as usual. She did not come to the quarry and he did not expect her to come. But the thought of her remained. He watched it with curiosity. It was strange to be conscious of another person's existence, to feel it as a close, urgent necessity; a necessity without qualifications, neither pleasant nor painful, merely final like an ultimatum. It was important to know that she existed in the world; it was important to think of her, of how she had awakened this morning, of how she moved, with her body still his, now his forever, of what she thought.

That evening, at dinner in the sooted kitchen, he opened a newspaper and saw the name of Roger Enright in the lines of a gossip column. He read the short paragraph:

"It looks like another grand project on its way to the wastebasket. Roger Enright, the oil king, seems to be stumped this time. He'll have to call a halt to his latest pipe dream of an Enright House. Architect trouble, we are told. Seems as if half a dozen of the big building boys have been shown the gate by the unsatisfiable Mr. Enright. Top-notchers, all of them."

Roark felt the wrench he had tried so often to fight, not to let it hurt him too much: the wrench of helplessness before the vision of what he could do, what should have been possible and was closed to him. Then, without reason, he thought of Dominique Francon. She had no relation to the things in his mind; he was shocked only to know that she could remain present even among these things.

A week passed. Then, one evening, he found a letter waiting for him at home. It had been forwarded from his former office to his last New York address, from there to Mike, from Mike to Connecticut. The engraved address of an oil company on the envelope meant nothing to him. He opened the letter. He read:

"Dear Mr. Roark,

"I have been endeavoring for some time to get in touch with you, but have been unable to locate you. Please communicate with me at your earliest convenience. I should like to discuss with you my proposed Enright House, if you are the man who built the Fargo Store.

"Sincerely yours,

"Roger Enright."

Half an hour later Roark was on a train. When the train started moving, he remembered Dominique and that he was leaving her behind. The thought seemed distant and unimportant. He was astonished only to know that he still thought of her, even now.

She could accept, thought Dominique, and come to forget in time everything that had happened to her, save one memory: that she had found pleasure in the thing which had happened, that he had known it, and more: that he had known it before he came to her and that he would not have come but for that knowledge. She had not given him the one answer that would have saved her: an answer of simple revulsion — she had found joy in her revulsion, in her terror and in his strength. That was the degradation she had wanted and she hated him for it.

She found a letter one morning, waiting for her on the breakfast table. It was from Alvah Scarret. " ... When are you coming back, Dominique? I can't tell you how much we miss you here. You're not a comfortable person to have around, I'm actually scared of you, but I might as well inflate your inflated ego some more, at a distance, and confess that we're all waiting for you impatiently. It will be like the homecoming of an Empress."

She read it and smiled. She thought, if they knew ... those people ... that old life and that awed reverence before her person ... I've been raped ... I've been raped by some redheaded hoodlum from a stone quarry ... I, Dominique Francon ... Through the fierce sense of humiliation, the words gave her the same kind of pleasure she had felt in his arms.

She thought of it when she walked through the countryside, when she passed people on the road and the people bowed to her, the chatelaine of the town. She wanted to scream it to the hearing of all.

She was not conscious of the days that passed. She felt content in a strange detachment, alone with the words she kept repeating to herself. Then, one morning, standing on the lawn in her garden, she understood that a week had passed and that she had not seen him for a week. She turned and walked rapidly across the lawn to the road. She was going to the quarry.

She walked the miles to the quarry, down the road, bareheaded in the sun. She did not hurry. It was not necessary to hurry. It was inevitable. To see him again ... She had no purpose. The need was too great to name a purpose ... Afterward ... There were other things, hideous, important things behind her and rising vaguely in her mind, but first, above all, just one thing: to see him again ...

She came to the quarry and she looked slowly, carefully, stupidly about her, stupidly because the enormity of what she saw would not penetrate her brain: she saw at once that he was not there. The work was in full swing, the sun was high over the busiest hour of the day, there was not an idle man in sight, but he was not among the men. She stood, waiting numbly, for a long time.

Then she saw the foreman and she motioned for him to approach.

"Good afternoon, Miss Francon ... Lovely day, Miss Francon, isn't it? Just like the middle of summer again and yet fall's not far away, yes, fall's coming, look at the leaves, Miss Francon."

She asked:

"There was a man you had here ... a man with very bright orange hair ... where is he?"

"Oh yes. That one. He's gone."

"Gone?"

"Quit. Left for New York, I think. Very suddenly too."

"When? A week ago?"

"Why, no. Just yesterday."

"Who was ... "

Then she stopped. She was going to ask: "Who was he?" She asked instead:

"Who was working here so late last night? I heard blasting."

"That was for a special order for Mr. Francon's building. The Cosmo-Slotnick Building, you know. A rash job."

"Yes ... I see ... "

"Sorry it disturbed you, Miss Francon."

"Oh, not at all ... "

She walked away. She would not ask for his name. It was her last chance of freedom.

She walked swiftly, easily, in sudden relief. She wondered why she had never noticed that she did not know his name and why she had never asked him. Perhaps because she had known everything she had to know about him from that first glance. She thought, one could not find some nameless worker in the city of New York. She was safe. If she knew his name, she would be on her way to New York now.

The future was simple. She had nothing to do except never to ask for his name. She had a reprieve. She had a chance to fight. She would break it — or it would break her. If it did, she would ask for his name.

3.

WHEN Peter Keating entered the office, the opening of the door sounded like a single high blast on a trumpet. The door flew forward as if it had opened of itself to the approach of a man before whom all doors were to open in such manner.

His day in the office began with the newspapers. There was a neat pile of them waiting, stacked on his desk by his secretary. He liked to see what new mentions appeared in print about the progress of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building or the firm of Francon & Keating.

There were no mentions in the papers this morning, and Keating frowned. He saw, however, a story about Ellsworth M. Toohey. It was a startling story. Thomas L. Foster, noted philanthropist, had died and had left, among larger bequests, the modest sum of one hundred thousand dollars to Ellsworth M. Toohey, "my friend and spiritual guide — in appreciation of his noble mind and true devotion to humanity." Ellsworth M. Toohey had accepted the legacy and had turned it over, intact, to the "Workshop of Social Study," a progressive institute of learning where he held the post of lecturer on "Art as a Social Symptom." He had given the simple explanation that he "did not believe in the institution of private inheritance." He had refused all further comment. "No, my friends," he had said, "not about this." And had added, with his charming knack for destroying the earnestness of his own moment: "I like to indulge in the luxury of commenting solely upon interesting subjects. I do not consider myself one of these."

Peter Keating read the story. And because he knew that it was an action which he would never have committed, he admired it tremendously.

Then he thought, with a familiar twinge of annoyance, that he had not been able to meet Ellsworth Toohey. Toohey had left on a lecture tour shortly after the award in the Cosmo-Slotnick competition, and the brilliant gatherings Keating had attended ever since were made empty by the absence of the one man he'd been most eager to meet. No mention of Keating's name had appeared in Toohey's column. Keating turned hopefully, as he did each morning, to "One Small Voice" in the Banner. But "One Small Voice" was subtitled "Songs and Things" today, and was devoted to proving the superiority of folk songs over any other forms of musical art, and of choral singing over any other manner of musical rendition.

Keating dropped the Banner. He got up and paced viciously across the office, because he had to turn now to a disturbing problem. He had been postponing it for several mornings. It was the matter of choosing a sculptor for the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. Months ago the commission for the giant statue of "Industry" to stand in the main lobby of the building had been awarded — tentatively — to Steven Mallory. The award had puzzled Keating, but it had been made by Mr. Slotnick, so Keating had approved of it. He had interviewed Mallory and said: " ... in recognition of your unusual ability ... of course you have no name, but you will have, after a commission like this ... they don't come every day like this building of mine."

He had not liked Mallory. Mallory's eyes were like black holes left after a fire not quite put out, and Mallory had not smiled once. He was twenty-four years old, had had one show of his work, but not many commissions. His work was strange and too violent. Keating remembered that Ellsworth Toohey had said once, long ago, in "One Small Voice."

"Mr. Mallory's human figures would have been very fine were it not for the hypothesis that God created the world and the human form. Had Mr. Mallory been entrusted with the job, he might, perhaps, have done better than the Almighty, if we are to judge by what he passes as human bodies in stone. Or would he?"

Keating had been baffled by Mr. Slotnick's choice, until he heard that Dimples Williams had once lived in the same Greenwich Village tenement with Steven Mallory, and Mr. Slotnick could refuse nothing to Dimples Williams at the moment. Mallory had been hired, had worked and had submitted a model of his statue of "Industry." When he saw it, Keating knew that the statue would look like a raw gash, like a smear of fire in the neat elegance of his lobby. It was a slender naked body of a man who looked as if he could break through the steel plate of a battleship and through any barrier whatever. It stood like a challenge. It left a strange stamp on one's eyes. It made the people around it seem smaller and sadder than usual. For the first time in his life, looking at that statue, Keating thought he understood what was meant by the word "heroic."

He said nothing. But the model was sent on to Mr. Slotnick and many people said, with indignation, what Keating had felt. Mr. Slotnick asked him to select another sculptor and left the choice in his hands.

Keating flopped down in an armchair, leaned back and clicked his tongue against his palate. He wondered whether he should give the commission to Bronson, the sculptor who was a friend of Mrs. Shupe, wife of the president of Cosmo; or to Palmer, who had been recommended by Mr. Huseby who was planning the erection of a new five-million-dollar cosmetic factory. Keating discovered that he liked this process of hesitation; he held the fate of two men and of many potential others; their fate, their work, their hope, perhaps even the amount of food in their stomachs. He could choose as he pleased, for any reason, without reasons; he could flip a coin, he could count them off on the buttons of his vest. He was a great man — by the grace of those who depended on him.

Then he noticed the envelope.

It lay on top of a pile of letters on his desk. It was a plain, thin, narrow envelope, but it bore the small masthead of the Banner in one corner. He reached for it hastily. It contained no letter; only a strip of proofs for tomorrow's Banner. He saw the familiar "One Small Voice" by Ellsworth M. Toohey, and under it a single word as subtitle, in large, spaced letters, a single word, blatant in its singleness, a salute by dint of omission:

"KEATING"

He dropped the paper strip and seized it again and read, choking upon great unchewed hunks of sentences, the paper trembling in his hand, the skin on his forehead drawing into tight pink spots. Toohey had written:

"Greatness is an exaggeration, and like all exaggerations of dimension it connotes at once the necessary corollary of emptiness. One thinks of an inflated toy balloon, does one not? There are, however, occasions when we are forced to acknowledge the promise of an approach — brilliantly close — to what we designate loosely by the term of greatness. Such a promise is looming on our architectural horizon in the person of a mere boy named Peter Keating.

"We have heard a great deal — and with justice — about the superb Cosmo-Slotnick Building which he has designed. Let us glance, for once, beyond the building, at the man whose personality is stamped upon it.

"There is no personality stamped upon that building — and in this, my friend, lies the greatness of the personality. It is the greatness of a selfless young spirit that assimilates all things and returns them to the world from which they came, enriched by the gentle brilliance of its own talent. Thus a single man comes to represent, not a lone freak, but the multitude of all men together, to embody the reach of all aspirations in his own ...

" ... Those gifted with discrimination will be able to hear the message which Peter Keating addresses to us in the shape of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building, to see that the three simple, massive ground floors are the solid bulk of our working classes which support all of society; that the rows of identical windows offering their panes to the sun are the souls of the common people, of the countless anonymous ones alike in the uniformity of brotherhood, reaching for the light; that the graceful pilasters rising from their firm base in the ground floors and bursting into the gay effervescence of their Corinthian capitals, are the flowers of Culture which blossom only when rooted in the rich soil of the broad masses ...

" ... In answer to those who consider all critics as fiends devoted solely to the destruction of sensitive talent, this column wishes to thank Peter Keating for affording us the rare — oh, so rare! — opportunity to prove our delight in our true mission, which is to discover young talent — when it is there to be discovered. And if Pete Keating should chance to read these lines, we expect no gratitude from him. The gratitude is ours."

It was when Keating began to read the article for the third time that he noticed a few lines written in red pencil across the space by its title:

"Dear Peter Keating,

"Drop in to see me at my office one of these days. Would love to discover what you look like.

"E.M.T."

He let the clipping flutter down to his desk, and he stood over it, running a strand of hair between his fingers, in a kind of happy stupor. Then he whirled around to his drawing of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building, that hung on the wall between a huge photograph of the Parthenon and one of the Louvre. He looked at the pilasters of his building. He had never thought of them as Culture flowering from out of the broad masses, but he decided that one could very well think that and all the rest of the beautiful stuff.

Then he seized the telephone, he spoke to a high, flat voice which belonged to Ellsworth Toohey's secretary, and he made an appointment to see Toohey at four-thirty of the next afternoon.

In the hours that followed, his daily work assumed a new relish. It was as if his usual activity had been only a bright, flat mural and had now become a noble bas-relief, pushed forward, given a three-dimensional reality by the words of Ellsworth Toohey.

Guy Francon descended from his office once in a while, for no ascertainable purpose. The subtler shades of his shirts and socks matched the gray of his temples. He stood smiling benevolently in silence. Keating flashed past him in the drafting room and acknowledged his presence, not stopping, but slowing his steps long enough to plant a crackling bit of newspaper into the folds of the mauve handkerchief in Francon's breast-pocket, with "Read that when you have time, Guy." He added, his steps halfway across the next room: "Want to have lunch with me today, Guy? Wait for me at the Plaza."

When he came back from lunch, Keating was stopped by a young draftsman who asked, his voice high with excitement:

"Say, Mr. Keating, who's it took a shot at Ellsworth Toohey?"

Keating managed to gasp out:

"Who is it did what?"

"Shot Mr. Toohey."

"Who?"

"That's what I want to know, who."

"Shot ... Ellsworth Toohey?"

"That's what I saw in the paper in the restaurant a guy had. Didn't have time to get one."

"He's ... killed?"

"That's what I don't know. Saw only it said about a shot."

"If he's dead, does that mean they won't publish his column tomorrow?"

"Dunno. Why, Mr. Keating?"

"Go get me a paper."

"But I've got to ... "

"Get me that paper, you damned idiot!"

The story was there, in the afternoon papers. A shot had been fired at Ellsworth Toohey that morning, as he stepped out of his car in front of a radio station where he was to deliver an address on "The Voiceless and the Undefended." The shot had missed him. Ellsworth Toohey had remained calm and sane throughout. His behavior had been theatrical only in too complete an absence of anything theatrical. He had said: "We cannot keep a radio audience waiting," and had hurried on upstairs to the microphone where, never mentioning the incident, he delivered a half-hour's speech from memory, as he always did. The assailant had said nothing when arrested.

Keating stared — his throat dry — at the name of the assailant. It was Steven Mallory.

Only the inexplicable frightened Keating, particularly when the inexplicable lay, not in tangible facts, but in that causeless feeling of dread within him. There was nothing to concern him directly in what had happened, except his wish that it had been someone else, anyone but Steven Mallory; and that he didn't know why he should wish this.

Steven Mallory had remained silent. He had given no explanation of his act. At first, it was supposed that he might have been prompted by despair at the loss of his commission for the Cosmo-Slotnick Building, since it was learned that he lived in revolting poverty. But it was learned, beyond any doubt, that Ellsworth Toohey had had no connection whatever with his loss. Toohey had never spoken to Mr. Slotnick about Steven Mallory. Toohey had not seen the statue of "Industry." On this point Mallory had broken his silence to admit that he had never met Toohey nor seen him in person before, nor known any of Toohey's friends. "Do you think that Mr. Toohey was in some way responsible for your losing that commission?" he was asked. Mallory had answered: "No."

"Then why?" Mallory said nothing.

Toohey had not recognized his assailant when he saw him seized by policemen on the sidewalk outside the radio station. He did not learn his name until after the broadcast. Then, stepping out of the studio into an anteroom full of waiting newsmen, Toohey said: "No, of course I won't press any charges. I wish they'd let him go. Who is he, by the way?" When he heard the name, Toohey's glance remained fixed somewhere between the shoulder of one man and the hat brim of another. Then Toohey — who had stood calmly while a bullet struck an inch from his face against the glass of the entrance door below — uttered one word and the word seemed to fall at his feet, heavy with fear: "Why?"

No one could answer. Presently, Toohey shrugged, smiled, and said: "If it was an attempt at free publicity — well, what atrocious taste!" But nobody believed this explanation, because all felt that Toohey did not believe it either. Through the interviews that followed, Toohey answered questions gaily. He said: "I had never thought myself important enough to warrant assassination. It would be the greatest tribute one could possibly expect — if it weren't so much in the style of an operetta." He managed to convey the charming impression that nothing of importance had happened because nothing of importance ever happened on earth.

Mallory was sent to jail to await trial. All efforts to question him failed.

The thought that kept Keating uneasily awake for many hours, that night, was the groundless certainty that Toohey felt exactly as he did. He knows, thought Keating, and I know, that there is — in Steven Mallory's motive — a greater danger than in his murderous attempt. But we shall never know his motive. Or shall we? ... And then he touched the core of fear: it was the sudden wish that he might be guarded, through the years to come, to the end of his life, from ever learning that motive.

Ellsworth Toohey's secretary rose in a leisurely manner, when Keating entered, and opened for him the door into Ellsworth Toohey's office.

Keating had grown past the stage of experiencing anxiety at the prospect of meeting a famous man, but he experienced it in the moment when he saw the door opening under her hand. He wondered what Toohey really looked like. He remembered the magnificent voice he had heard in the lobby of the strike meeting, and he imagined a giant of a man, with a rich mane of hair, perhaps just turning gray, with bold, broad features of an ineffable benevolence, something vaguely like the countenance of God the Father.

"Mr. Peter Keating — Mr. Toohey," said the secretary and closed the door behind him.

At a first glance upon Ellsworth Monkton Toohey one wished to offer him a heavy, well-padded overcoat — so frail and unprotected did his thin little body appear, like that of a chicken just emerging from the egg, in all the sorry fragility of unhardened bones. At a second glance one wished to be sure that the overcoat should be an exceedingly good one — so exquisite were the garments covering that body. The lines of the dark suit followed frankly the shape within it, apologizing for nothing: they sank with the concavity of the narrow chest, they slid down from the long, thin neck with the sharp slope of the shoulders. A great forehead dominated the body. The wedge-shaped face descended from the broad temples to a small, pointed chin. The hair was black, lacquered, divided into equal halves by a thin white line. This made the skull look tight and trim, but left too much emphasis to the ears that flared out in solitary nakedness, like the handles of a bouillon cup. The nose was long and thin, prolonged by the small dab of a black mustache. The eyes were dark and startling. They held such a wealth of intellect and of twinkling gaiety that his glasses seemed to be worn not to protect his eyes but to protect other men from their excessive brilliance.

"Hello, Peter Keating," said Ellsworth Monkton Toohey in his compelling, magical voice. "What do you think of the temple of Nike Apteros?"

"How ... do you do, Mr. Toohey," said Keating, stopped, stupefied. "What do I think ... of what?"

"Sit down, my friend. Of the temple of Nike Apteros."

"Well ... Well ... I ... "

"I feel certain that you couldn't have overlooked that little gem. The Parthenon has usurped the recognition which — and isn't that usually the case? the bigger and stronger appropriating all the glory, while the beauty of the unprepossessing goes unsung — which should have been awarded to that magnificent little creation of the great free spirit of Greece. You've noted, I'm sure, the fine balance of its mass, the supreme perfection of its modest proportions — ah, yes, you know, the supreme in the modest — the delicate craftsmanship of detail?"

"Yes, of course," muttered Keating, "that's always been my favorite — the temple of Nike Apteros."

"Really?" said Ellsworth Toohey, with a smile which Keating could not quite classify. "I was certain of it. I was certain you'd say it. You have a very handsome face, Peter Keating, when you don't stare like this — which is really quite unnecessary."

And Toohey was laughing suddenly, laughing quite obviously, quite insultingly, at Keating and at himself; it was as if he were underscoring the falseness of the whole procedure. Keating sat aghast for an instant; and then he found himself laughing easily in answer, as if at home with a very old friend.

"That's better," said Toohey. "Don't you find it advisable not to talk too seriously in an important moment? And this might be a very important moment — who knows? — for both of us. And, of course, I knew you'd be a little afraid of me and — oh, I admit — I was quite a bit afraid of you, so isn't this much better?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Toohey," said Keating happily. His normal assurance in meeting people had vanished; but he felt at ease, as if all responsibility were taken away from him and he did not have to worry about saying the right things, because he was being led gently into saying them without any effort on his part. "I've always known it would be an important moment when I met you, Mr. Toohey. Always. For years."

"Really?" said Ellsworth Toohey, the eyes behind the glasses attentive. "Why?"

"Because I'd always hoped that I would please you, that you'd approve of me ... of my work ... when the time came ... why, I even ... "

"Yes?"

" ... I even thought, so often, when drawing, is this the kind of building that Ellsworth Toohey would say is good? I tried to see it like that, through your eyes ... I ... I've ... " Toohey listened watchfully. "I've always wanted to meet you because you're such a profound thinker and a man of such cultural distinc — "

"Now," said Toohey, his voice kindly but a little impatient; his interest had dropped on that last sentence. "None of that. I don't mean to be ungracious, but we'll dispense with that sort of thing, shall we? Unnatural as this may sound, I really don't like to hear personal praise."

It was Toohey's eyes, thought Keating, that put him at ease. There was such a vast understanding in Toohey's eyes and such an unfastidious kindness — no, what a word to think of — such an unlimited kindness. It was as if one could hide nothing from him, but it was not necessary to hide it, because he would forgive anything. They were the most unaccusing eyes that Keating had ever seen.

"But, Mr. Toohey," he muttered, "I did want to ... "

"You wanted to thank me for my article," said Toohey and made a little grimace of gay despair. "And here I've been trying so hard to prevent you from doing it. Do let me get away with it, won't you? There's no reason why you should thank me. If you happened to deserve the things I said — well, the credit belongs to you, not to me. Doesn't it?"

"But I was so happy that you thought I'm ... "

" ... a great architect? But surely, my boy, you knew that. Or weren't you quite sure? Never quite sure of it?"

"Well, I ... "

It was only a second's pause. And it seemed to Keating that this pause was all Toohey had wanted to hear from him; Toohey did not wait for the rest, but spoke as if he had received a full answer, and an answer that pleased him.

"And as for the Cosmo-Slotnick Building, who can deny that it's an extraordinary achievement? You know, I was greatly intrigued by its plan. It's a most ingenious plan. A brilliant plan. Very unusual. Quite different from what I have observed in your previous work. Isn't it?"

"Naturally," said Keating, his voice clear and hard for the first time, "the problem was different from anything I'd done before, so I worked out that plan to fit the particular requirements of the problem."

"Of course," said Toohey gently. "A beautiful piece of work. You should be proud of it."

Keating noticed that Toohey's eyes stood centered in the middle of the lenses and the lenses stood focused straight on his pupils, and Keating knew suddenly that Toohey knew he had not designed the plan of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. This did not frighten him. What frightened him was that he saw approval in Toohey's eyes.

"If you must feel — no, not gratitude, gratitude is such an embarrassing word — but, shall we say, appreciation?" Toohey continued, and his voice had grown softer, as if Keating were a fellow conspirator who would know that the words used were to be, from now on, a code for a private meaning, "you might thank me for understanding the symbolic implications of your building and for stating them in words as you stated them in marble. Since, of course, you are not just a common mason, but a thinker in stone."

"Yes," said Keating, "that was my abstract theme, when I designed the building — the great masses and the flowers of culture. I've always believed that true culture springs from the common man. But I had no hope that anyone would ever understand me."

Toohey smiled. His thin lips slid open, his teeth showed. He was not looking at Keating. He was looking down at his own hand, the long, slender, sensitive hand of a concert pianist, moving a sheet of paper on the desk. Then he said: "Perhaps we're brothers of the spirit, Keating. The human spirit. That is all that matters in life" — not looking at Keating, but past him, the lenses raised flagrantly to a line over Keating's face.

And Keating knew that Toohey knew he had never thought of any abstract theme until he'd read that article, and more: that Toohey approved again. When the lenses moved slowly to Keating's face, the eyes were sweet with affection, an affection very cold and very real. Then Keating felt as if the walls of the room were moving gently in upon him, pushing him into a terrible intimacy, not with Toohey, but with some unknown guilt. He wanted to leap to his feet and run. He sat still, his mouth half open.

And without knowing what prompted him, Keating heard his own voice in the silence:

"And I did want to say how glad I was that you escaped that maniac's bullet yesterday, Mr. Toohey."

"Oh? ... Oh, thanks. That? Well! Don't let it upset you. Just one of the minor penalties one pays for prominence in public life."

"I've never liked Mallory. A strange sort of person. Too tense. I don't like people who're tense. I've never liked his work either."

"Just an exhibitionist. Won't amount to much."

"It wasn't my idea, of course, to give him a try. It was Mr. Slotnick's. Pull, you know. But Mr. Slotnick knew better in the end."

"Did Mallory ever mention my name to you?"

"No. Never."

"I haven't even met him, you know. Never saw him before. Why did he do it?"

And then it was Toohey who sat still, before what he saw on Keating's face; Toohey, alert and insecure for the first time. This was it, thought Keating, this was the bond between them, and the bond was fear, and more, much more than that, but fear was the only recognizable name to give it. And he knew, with unreasoning finality, that he liked Toohey better than any man he had ever met.

"Well, you know how it is," said Keating brightly, hoping that the commonplace he was about to utter would close the subject. "Mallory is an incompetent and knows it and he decided to take it out on you as a symbol of the great and the able."

But instead of a smile, Keating saw the shot of Toohey's sudden glance at him; it was not a glance, it was a fluoroscope, he thought he could feel it crawling searchingly inside his bones. Then Toohey's face seemed to harden, drawing together again in composure, and Keating knew that Toohey had found relief somewhere, in his bones or in his gaping, bewildered face, that some hidden immensity of ignorance within him had given Toohey reassurance. Then Toohey said slowly, strangely, derisively:

"You and I, we're going to be great friends, Peter."

Keating let a moment pass before he caught himself to answer hastily:

"Oh, I hope so, Mr. Toohey!"

"Really, Peter! I'm not as old as all that, am I? 'Ellsworth' is the monument to my parents' peculiar taste in nomenclature."

"Yes ... Ellsworth."

"That's better. I really don't mind the name, when compared to some of the things I've been called privately — and publicly — these many years. Oh, well. Flattering. When one makes enemies one knows that one's dangerous where it's necessary to be dangerous. There are things that must be destroyed — or they'll destroy us. We'll see a great deal of each other, Peter." The voice was smooth and sure now, with the finality of a decision tested and reached, with the certainty that never again would anything in Keating be a question mark to him. "For instance, I've been thinking for some time of getting together a few young architects — I know so many of them — just an informal little organization, to exchange ideas, you know, to develop a spirit of co-operation, to follow a common line of action for the common good of the profession if necessity arises. Nothing as stuffy as the A.G.A. Just a youth group. Think you'd be interested?"

"Why, of course! And you'd be the chairman?"

"Oh dear, no. I'm never chairman of anything, Peter. I dislike titles. No, I rather thought you'd make the right chairman for us, can't think of anyone better."

"Me?"

"You, Peter. Oh, well, it's only a project — nothing definite — just an idea I've been toying with in odd moments. We'll talk about it some other time. There's something I'd like you to do — and that's really one of the reasons why I wanted to meet you,"

"Oh, sure, Mr. Too — sure, Ellsworth. Anything I can do for you ... "

"It's not for me. Do you know Lois Cook?"

"Lois ... who?"

"Cook. You don't. But you will. That young woman is the greatest literary genius since Goethe. You must read her, Peter. I don't suggest that as a rule except to the discriminating. She's so much above the heads of the middle-class who love the obvious. She's planning to build a house. A little private residence on the Bowery. Yes, on the Bowery. Just like Lois. She's asked me to recommend an architect. I'm certain that it will take a person like you to understand a person like Lois. I'm going to give her your name — if you're interested in what is to be a small, though quite costly, residence."

"But of course! That's ... very kind of you, Ellsworth! You know, I thought when you said ... and when I read your note, that you wanted — well, some favor from me, you know, a good turn for a good turn, and here you're ... "

"My dear Peter, how naive you are!"

"Oh, I suppose I shouldn't have said that! I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you, I ... "

"I don't mind. You must learn to know me better. Strange as it may sound, a totally selfless interest in one's fellow men is possible in this world, Peter."

Then they talked about Lois Cook and her three published works — "Novels? No, Peter, not exactly novels ... No, not collections of stories either ... that's just it, just Lois Cook — a new form of literature entirely ... " — about the fortune she had inherited from a long line of successful tradesmen, and about the house she planned to build.

It was only when Toohey had risen to escort Keating to the door — and Keating noted how precariously erect he stood on his very small feet — that Toohey paused suddenly to say:

"Incidentally, it seems to me as if I should remember some personal connection between us, though for the life of me I can't quite place ... oh, yes, of course. My niece. Little Catherine."

Keating felt his face tighten, and knew he must not allow this to be discussed, but smiled awkwardly instead of protesting.

"I understand you're engaged to her?"

"Yes."

"Charming," said Toohey. "Very charming. Should enjoy being your uncle. You love her very much?"

"Yes," said Keating. "Very much."

The absence of stress in his voice made the answer solemn. It was, laid before Toohey, the first bit of sincerity and of importance within Keating's being.

"How pretty," said Toohey. "Young love. Spring and dawn and heaven and drugstore chocolates at a dollar and a quarter a box. The prerogative of the gods and of the movies ... Oh, I do approve, Peter. I think it's lovely. You couldn't have made a better choice than Catherine. She's just the kind for whom the world is well lost — the world with all its problems and all its opportunities for greatness — oh, yes, well lost because she's innocent and sweet and pretty and anemic."

"If you're going to ... " Keating began, but Toohey smiled with a luminous sort of kindliness.

"Oh, Peter, of course I understand. And I approve. I'm a realist. Man has always insisted on making an ass of himself. Oh, come now, we must never lose our sense of humor. Nothing's really sacred but a sense of humor. Still, I've always loved the tale of Tristan and Isolde. It's the most beautiful story ever told — next to that of Mickey and Minnie Mouse."

4.

" ... TOOTHBRUSH in the jaw toothbrush brush brush tooth jaw foam dome in the foam Roman dome come home home in the jaw Rome dome tooth toothbrush toothpick pickpocket socket rocket ... "

Peter Keating squinted his eyes, his glance unfocused as for a great distance, but put the book down. The book was thin and black, with scarlet letters forming: Clouds and Shrouds by Lois Cook. The jacket said that it was a record of Miss Cook's travels around the world.

Keating leaned back with a sense of warmth and well-being. He liked this book. It had made the routine of his Sunday morning breakfast a profound spiritual experience; he was certain that it was profound, because he didn't understand it.

Peter Keating had never felt the need to formulate abstract convictions. But he had a working substitute. "A thing is not high if one can reach it; it is not great if one can reason about it; it is not deep if one can see its bottom" — this had always been his credo, unstated and unquestioned. This spared him any attempt to reach, reason or see; and it cast a nice reflection of scorn on those who made the attempt. So he was able to enjoy the work of Lois Cook. He felt uplifted by the knowledge of his own capacity to respond to the abstract, the profound, the ideal. Toohey had said: "That's just it, sound as sound, the poetry of words as words, style as a revolt against style. But only the fines' spirit can appreciate it, Peter." Keating thought he could talk of this book to his friends, and if they did not understand he would know that he was superior to them. He would not need to explain that superiority — that's just it, "superiority as superiority" — automatically denied to those who asked for explanations. He loved the book.

He reached for another piece of toast. He saw, at the end of the table, left there for him by his mother, the heavy pile of the Sunday paper. He picked it up, feeling strong enough, in this moment, in the confidence of his secret spiritual grandeur, to face the whole world contained in that pile. He pulled out the rotogravure section. He stopped. He saw the reproduction of a drawing: the Enright House by Howard Roark.

He did not need to see the caption or the brusque signature in the corner of the sketch; he knew that no one else had conceived that house and he knew the manner of drawing, serene and violent at once, the pencil lines like high-tension wires on the paper, slender and innocent to see, but not to be touched. It was a structure on a broad space by the East River. He did not grasp it as a building, at first glance, but as a rising mass of rock crystal. There was the same severe, mathematical order holding together a free, fantastic growth; straight lines and clean angles, space slashed with a knife, yet in a harmony of formation as delicate as the work of a jeweler; an incredible variety of shapes, each separate unit unrepeated, but leading inevitably to the next one and to the whole; so that the future inhabitants were to have, not a square cage out of a square pile of cages, but each a single house held to the other houses like a single crystal to the side of a rock. Keating looked at the sketch. He had known for a long time that Howard Roark had been chosen to build the Enright House. He had seen a few mentions of Roark's name in the papers; not much, all of it to be summed up only as "some young architect chosen by Mr. Enright for some reason, probably an interesting young architect." The caption under the drawing announced that the construction of the project was to begin at once. Well, thought Keating, and dropped the paper, so what? The paper fell beside the black and scarlet book. He looked at both. He felt dimly as if Lois Cook were his defense against Howard Roark. "What's that, Petey?" his mother's voice asked behind him. He handed the paper to her over his shoulder. The paper fell past him back to the table in a second. "Oh," shrugged Mrs. Keating. "Huh ... " She stood beside him. Her trim silk dress was fitted too tightly, revealing the solid rigidity of her corset; a small pin glittered at her throat, small enough to display ostentatiously that it was made of real diamonds. She was like the new apartment into which they had moved: conspicuously expensive. The apartment's decoration had been Keating's first professional job for himself. It had been furnished in fresh, new mid-Victorian. It was conservative and stately. Over the fireplace in the drawing room hung a large old painting of what was not but looked like an illustrious ancestor.

"Petey sweetheart, I do hate to rush you on a Sunday morning, but isn't it time to dress up? I've got to run now and I'd hate you to forget the time and be late, it's so nice of Mr. Toohey asking you to his house!"

"Yes, Mother."

"Any famous guests coming too?"

"No. No guests. But there will be one other person there. Not famous." She looked at him expectantly. He added: "Katie will be there."

The name seemed to have no effect on her whatever. A strange assurance had coated her lately, like a layer of fat through which that particular question could penetrate no longer.

"Just a family tea," he emphasized. "That's what he said."

"Very nice of him. I'm sure Mr. Toohey is a very intelligent man."

"Yes, Mother."

He rose impatiently and went to his room.

It was Keating's first visit to the distinguished residential hotel where Catherine and her uncle had moved recently. He did not notice much about the apartment, beyond remembering that it was simple, very clean and smartly modest, that it contained a great number of books and very few pictures, but these authentic and precious. One never remembered the apartment of Ellsworth Toohey, only its host. The host, on this Sunday afternoon, wore a dark gray suit, correct as a uniform, and bedroom slippers of black patent leather trimmed with red; the slippers mocked the severe elegance of the suit, yet completed the elegance as an audacious anticlimax. He sat in a broad, low chair and his face wore an expression of cautious gentleness, so cautious that Keating and Catherine felt, at times, as if they were insignificant soap bubbles.

Keating did not like the way Catherine sat on the edge of a chair, hunched, her legs drawn awkwardly together. He wished she would not wear the same suit for the third season, but she did. She kept her eyes on one point somewhere in the middle of the carpet. She seldom looked at Keating. She never looked at her uncle. Keating found no trace of that joyous admiration with which she had always spoken of Toohey, which he had expected to see her display in his presence. There was something heavy and colorless about Catherine, and very tired.

Toohey's valet brought in the tea tray.

"You will pour, won't you please, my dear?" said Toohey to Catherine. "Ah, there's nothing like tea in the afternoon. When the British Empire collapses, historians will find that it had made but two invaluable contributions to civilization — this tea ritual and the detective novel. Catherine, my dear, do you have to grasp that pot handle as if it were a meat axe? But never mind, it's charming, it's really what we love you for, Peter and I, we wouldn't love you if you were graceful as a duchess — who wants a duchess nowadays?"

Catherine poured the tea and spilled it on the glass table top, which she had never done before.

"I did want to see you two together for once," said Toohey, holding a delicate cup balanced nonchalantly. "Perfectly silly of me, isn't it? There's really nothing to make an occasion of, but then I'm silly and sentimental at times, like all of us. My compliments on your choice, Catherine. I owe you an apology, I never suspected you of such good taste. You and Peter make a wonderful couple. You'll do a great deal for him. You'll cook his Cream of Wheat, launder his handkerchiefs and bear his children, though of course the children will all have measles at one time or another, which is a nuisance."

"But, after all, you ... you do approve of it?" Keating asked anxiously.

"Approve of it? Of what, Peter?"

"Of our marriage ... eventually."

"What a superfluous question, Peter! Of course, I approve of it. But how young you are! That's the way of young people — they make an issue where none exists. You asked that as if the whole thing were important enough to disapprove of."

"Katie and I met seven years ago," said Keating defensively. "And it was love at first sight of course?"

"Yes," said Keating and felt himself being ridiculous. "It must have been spring," said Toohey. "It usually is. There's always a dark movie theater, and two people lost to the world, their hands clasped together — but hands do perspire when held too long, don't they? Still, it's beautiful to be in love. The sweetest story ever told — and the tritest. Don't turn away like that, Catherine. We must never allow ourselves to lose our sense of humor."

He smiled. The kindliness of his smile embraced them both. The kindliness was so great that it made their love seem small and mean, because only something contemptible could evoke such immensity of compassion. He asked:

"Incidentally, Peter, when do you intend to get married?"

"Oh, well ... we've never really set a definite date, you know how it's been, all the things happening to me and now Katie has this work of hers and ... And, by the way," he added sharply, because that matter of Katie's work irritated him without reason, "when we're married, Katie will have to give that up. I don't approve of it."

"But of course," said Toohey, "I don't approve of it either, if Catherine doesn't like it."

Catherine was working as day nursery attendant at the Clifford Settlement House. It had been her own idea. She had visited the settlement often with her uncle, who conducted classes in economics there, and she had become interested in the work.

"But I do like it!" she said with sudden excitement. "I don't see why you resent it, Peter!" There was a harsh little note in her voice, defiant and unpleasant. "I've never enjoyed anything so much in my life. Helping people who're helpless and unhappy. I went there this morning — I didn't have to, but I wanted to — and then I rushed so on my way home, I didn't have time to change my clothes, but that doesn't matter, who cares what I look like? And" — the harsh note was gone, she was speaking eagerly and very fast — "Uncle Ellsworth, imagine! little Billy Hansen had a sore throat — you remember Billy? And the nurse wasn't there, and I had to swab his throat with Argyrol, the poor thing! He had the most awful white mucus patches down in his throat!" Her voice seemed to shine, as if she were speaking of great beauty. She looked at her uncle. For the first time Keating saw the affection he had expected. She went on speaking about her work, the children, the settlement. Toohey listened gravely. He said nothing. But the earnest attention in his eyes changed him, his mocking gaiety vanished and he forgot his own advice, he was being serious, very serious indeed. When he noticed that Catherine's plate was empty, he offered her the sandwich tray with a simple gesture and made it, somehow, a gracious gesture of respect.

Keating waited impatiently till she paused for an instant. He wanted to change the subject. He glanced about the room and saw the Sunday papers. This was a question he had wanted to ask for a long time. He asked cautiously:

"Ellsworth ... what do you think of Roark?"

"Roark? Roark?" asked Toohey. "Who is Roark?" The too innocent, too trifling manner in which he repeated the name, with the faint, contemptuous question mark quite audible at the end, made Keating certain that Toohey knew the name well. One did not stress total ignorance of a subject if one were in total ignorance of it. Keating said:

"Howard Roark. You know, the architect. The one who's doing the Enright House."

"Oh? Oh, yes, someone's doing that Enright House at last, isn't he?"

"There's a picture of it in the Chronicle today."

"Is there? I did glance through the Chronicle."

"And ... what do you think of that building?"

"If it were important, I should have remembered it."

"Of course!" Keating's syllables danced, as if his breath caught at each one in passing: "It's an awful, crazy thing! Like nothing you ever saw or want to see!"

He felt a sense of deliverance. It was as if he had spent his life believing that he carried a congenital disease, and suddenly the words of the greatest specialist on earth had pronounced him healthy. He wanted to laugh, freely, stupidly, without dignity. He wanted to talk.

"Howard's a friend of mine," he said happily. "A friend of yours? You know him?"

"Do I know him! Why, we went to school together — Stanton, you know — why, he lived at our house for three years, I can tell you the color of his underwear and how he takes a shower — I've seen him!"

"He lived at your house in Stanton?" Toohey repeated. Toohey spoke with a kind of cautious precision. The sounds of his voice were small and dry and final, like the cracks of matches being broken.

It was very peculiar, thought Keating. Toohey was asking him a great many questions about Howard Roark. But the questions did not make sense. They were not about buildings, they were not about architecture at all. They were pointless personal questions — strange to ask about a man of whom he had never heard before.

"Does he laugh often?"

"Very rarely."

"Does he seem unhappy?"

"Never."

"Did he have many friends at Stanton?"

"He's never had any friends anywhere."

"The boys didn't like him?"

"Nobody can like him."

"Why?"

"He makes you feel it would be an impertinence to like him."

"Did he go out, drink, have a good time?"

"Never."

"Does he like money?"

"No."

"Does he like to be admired?"

"No."

"Does he believe in God?"

"No."

"Does he talk much?"

"Very little."

"Does he listen if others discuss any ... ideas with him?"

"He listens. It would be better if he didn't."

"Why?"

"It would be less insulting — if you know what I mean, when a man listens like that and you know it hasn't made the slightest bit of difference to him."

"Did he always want to be an architect?"

"He ... "

"What's the matter, Peter?"

"Nothing. It just occurred to me how strange it is that I've never asked myself that about him before. Here's what's strange: you can't ask that about him. He's a maniac on the subject of architecture. It seems to mean so damn much to him that he's lost all human perspective. He just has no sense of humor about himself at all — now there's a man without a sense of humor, Ellsworth. You don't ask what he'd do if he didn't want to be an architect."

"No," said Toohey. "You ask what he'd do if he couldn't be an

architect."

"He'd walk over corpses. Any and all of them. All of us. But

he'd be an architect."

Toohey folded his napkin, a crisp little square of cloth on his knee; he folded it accurately, once across each way, and he ran his fingernail along the edges to make a sharp crease.

"Do you remember our little youth group of architects, Peter?" he asked. "I'm making arrangements for a first meeting soon. I've spoken to many of our future members and you'd be flattered by what they said about you as our prospective chairman."

They talked pleasantly for another half hour. When Keating rose to go, Toohey declared:

"Oh, yes. I did speak to Lois Cook about you. You'll hear from her shortly."

"Thank you so much, Ellsworth. By the way, I'm reading Clouds and Shrouds."

"And?"

"Oh, it's tremendous. You know, Ellsworth, it ... it makes you think so differently about everything you've thought before."

"Yes," said Toohey, "doesn't it?"

He stood at the window, looking out at the last sunshine of a cold, bright afternoon. Then he turned and said:

"It's a lovely day. Probably one of the last this year. Why don't you take Catherine out for a little walk, Peter?"

"Oh, I'd love to!" said Catherine eagerly.

"Well, go ahead." Toohey smiled gaily. "What's the matter, Catherine? Do you have to wait for my permission?"

When they walked out together, when they were alone in the cold brilliance of streets flooded with late sunlight, Keating felt himself recapturing everything Catherine had always meant to him, the strange emotion that he could not keep in the presence of others. He closed his hand over hers. She withdrew her hand, took off her glove and slipped her fingers into his. And then he thought suddenly that hands did perspire when held too long, and he walked faster in irritation. He thought that they were walking there like Mickey and Minnie Mouse and that they probably appeared ridiculous to the passers-by. To shake himself free of these thoughts he glanced down at her face. She was looking straight ahead at the gold light, he saw her delicate profile and the faint crease of a smile in the corner of her mouth, a smile of quiet happiness. But he noticed that the edge of her eyelid was pale and he began to wonder whether she was anemic.

Lois Cook sat on the floor in the middle of her living room, her legs crossed Turkish fashion, showing large bare knees, gray stockings rolled over tight garters, and a piece of faded pink drawers. Peter Keating sat on the edge of a violet satin chaise lounge. Never before had he felt uncomfortable at a first interview with a client.

Lois Cook was thirty-seven. She had stated insistently, in her publicity and in private conversation, that she was sixty-four. It was repeated as a whimsical joke and it created about her name a vague impression of eternal youth. She was tall, dry, narrow-shouldered and broad-hipped. She had a long, sallow face, and eyes set close together. Her hair hung about her ears in greasy strands. Her fingernails were broken. She looked offensively unkempt, with studied slovenliness as careful as grooming — and for the same purpose.

She talked incessantly, rocking back and forth on her haunches:

" ... yes, on the Bowery. A private residence. The shrine on the Bowery. I have the site, I wanted it and I bought it, as simple as that, or my fool lawyer bought it for me, you must meet my lawyer, he has halitosis. I don't know what you'll cost me, but it's unessential, money is commonplace. Cabbage is commonplace too. It must have three stories and a living room with a tile floor."

"Miss Cook, I've read Clouds and Shrouds and it was a spiritual revelation to me. Allow me to include myself among the few who understand the courage and significance of what you're achieving single-handed while ... "

"Oh, can the crap," said Lois Cook and winked at him.

"But I mean it!" he snapped angrily. "I loved your book. I ... "

She looked bored.

"It is so commonplace," she drawled, "to be understood by everybody."

"But Mr. Toohey said ... "

"Ah, yes. Mr. Toohey." Her eyes were alert now, insolently guilty, like the eyes of a child who has just perpetrated some nasty little joke. "Mr. Toohey. I'm chairman of a little youth group of writers in which Mr. Toohey is very interested."

"You are?" he said happily. It seemed to be the first direct communication between them. "Isn't that interesting! Mr. Toohey is getting together a little youth group of architects, too, and he's kind enough to have me in mind for chairman."

"Oh," she said and winked. "One of us?"

"Of whom?"

He did not know what he had done, but he knew that he had disappointed her in some way. She began to laugh. She sat there, looking up at him, laughing deliberately in his face, laughing ungraciously and not gaily.

"What the ... !" He controlled himself. "What's the matter, Miss Cook?"

"Oh my!" she said. "You're such a sweet, sweet boy and so pretty!"

"Mr. Toohey is a great man," he said angrily. "He's the most ... the noblest personality I've ever ... "

"Oh, yes. Mr. Toohey is a wonderful man." Her voice was strange by omission, it was flagrantly devoid of respect. "My best friend. The most wonderful man on earth. There's the earth and there's Mr. Toohey — a law of nature. Besides, think how nicely you can rhyme it: Toohey — gooey — phooey — hooey. Nevertheless, he's a saint. That's very rare. As rare as genius. I'm a genius. I want a living room without windows. No windows at all, remember that when you draw up the plans. No windows, a tile floor and a black ceiling. And no electricity. I want no electricity in my house, just kerosene lamps. Kerosene lamps with chimneys, and candles. To hell with Thomas Edison! Who was he anyway?"

Her words did not disturb him as much as her smile. It was not a smile, it was a permanent smirk raising the corners of her long mouth, making her look like a sly, vicious imp.

"And, Keating, I want the house to be ugly. Magnificently ugly. I want it to be the ugliest house in New York."

"The ... ugliest. Miss Cook?"

"Sweetheart, the beautiful is so commonplace!"

"Yes, but ... but I ... well, I don't see how I could permit myself to ... "

"Keating, where's your courage? Aren't you capable of a sublime gesture on occasion? They all work so hard and struggle and suffer, trying to achieve beauty, trying to surpass one another in beauty. Let's surpass them all! Let's throw their sweat in their face. Let's destroy them at one stroke. Let's be gods. Let's be ugly."

He accepted the commission. After a few weeks he stopped feeling uneasy about it. Wherever he mentioned this new job, he met a respectful curiosity. It was an amused curiosity, but it was respectful. The name of Lois Cook was well known in the best drawing rooms he visited. The titles of her books were flashed in conversation like the diamonds in the speaker's intellectual crown. There was always a note of challenge in the voices pronouncing them. It sounded as if the speaker were being very brave. It was a satisfying bravery; it never aroused antagonism. For an author who did not sell, her name seemed strangely famous and honored. She was the standard-bearer of a vanguard of intellect and revolt. Only it was not quite clear to him just exactly what the revolt was against. Somehow, he preferred not to know.

He designed the house as she wished it. It was a three-floor edifice, part marble, part stucco, adorned with gargoyles and carriage lanterns. It looked like a structure from an amusement park.

His sketch of it was reproduced in more publications than any other drawing he had ever made, with the exception of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. One commentator expressed the opinion that "Peter Keating is showing a promise of being more than just a bright young man with a knack for pleasing stuffy moguls of big business. He is venturing into the field of intellectual experimentation with a client such as Lois Cook." Toohey referred to the house as "a cosmic joke."

But a peculiar sensation remained in Keating's mind: the feeling of an aftertaste. He would experience a dim flash of it while working on some important structure he liked; he would experience it in the moments when he felt proud of his work. He could not identify the quality of the feeling; but he knew that part of it was a sense of shame.

Once, he confessed it to Ellsworth Toohey. Toohey laughed. "That's good for you, Peter. One must never allow oneself to acquire an exaggerated sense of one's own importance. There's no necessity to burden oneself with absolutes."

5.

DOMINIQUE had returned to New York. She returned without purpose, merely because she could not stay in her country house longer than three days after her last visit to the quarry. She had to be in the city, it was a sudden necessity, irresistible and senseless. She expected nothing of the city. But she wanted the feeling of the streets and the buildings holding her there. In the morning, when she awakened and heard the muffled roar of traffic far below, the sound was a humiliation, a reminder of where she was and why. She stood at the window, her arms spread wide, holding on to each side of the frame; it was as if she held a piece of the city, all the streets and rooftops outlined on the glass between her two hands.

She went out alone for long walks. She walked fast, her hands in the pockets of an old coat, its collar raised. She had told herself that she was not hoping to meet him. She was not looking for him. But she had to be out in the streets, blank, purposeless, for hours at a time.

She had always hated the streets of a city. She saw the faces streaming past her, the faces made alike by fear — fear as a common denominator, fear of themselves, fear of all and of one another, fear making them ready to pounce upon whatever was held sacred by any single one they met. She could not define the nature or the reason of that fear. But she had always felt its presence. She had kept herself clean and free in a single passion — to touch nothing. She had liked facing them in the streets, she had liked the impotence of their hatred, because she offered them nothing to be hurt.

She was not free any longer. Each step through the streets hurt her now. She was tied to him — as he was tied to every part of the city. He was a nameless worker doing some nameless job, lost in these crowds, dependent on them, to be hurt by any one of them, to be shared by her with the whole city. She hated the thought of him on the sidewalks people had used. She hated the thought of a clerk handing to him a package of cigarettes across a counter. She hated the elbows touching his elbows in a subway train. She came home, after these walks, shaking with fever. She went out again the next day.

When the term of her vacation expired, she went to the office of the Banner in order to resign. Her work and her column did not seem amusing to her any longer. She stopped Alvah Scarret's effusive greetings. She said: "I just came back to tell you that I'm quitting, Alvah." He looked at her stupidly. He uttered only: "Why?"

It was the first sound from the outside world to reach her in a long time. She had always acted on the impulse of the moment, proud of the freedom to need no reasons for her actions. Now she had to face a "why?" that carried an answer she could not escape. She thought: Because of him, because she was letting him change the course of her life. It would be another violation; she could see him smiling as he had smiled on the path in the woods. She had no choice. Either course taken would be taken under compulsion: she could leave her work, because he had made her want to leave it, or she could remain, hating it, in order to keep her life unchanged, in defiance of him. The last was harder.

She raised her head. She said: "Just a joke, Alvah. Just wanted to see what you'd say. I'm not quitting."

She had been back at work for a few days when Ellsworth Toohey walked into her office.

"Hello, Dominique," he said. "Just heard you're back."

"Hello, Ellsworth."

"I'm glad. You know, I've always had the feeling that you'll walk out on us some morning without any reason."

"The feeling, Ellsworth? Or the hope?"

He was looking at her, his eyes as kindly, his smile as charming as ever; but there was a tinge of self-mockery in the charm, as if he knew that she did not approve of it, and a tinge of assurance, as if he were showing that he would look kindly and charming just the same.

"You know, you're wrong there," he said, smiling peacefully. "You've always been wrong about that."

"No. I don't fit, Ellsworth. Do I?"

"I could, of course, ask: Into what? But supposing I don't ask it. Supposing I just say that people who don't fit have their uses also, as well as those who do? Would you like that better? Of course, the simplest thing to say is that I've always been a great admirer of yours and always will be."

"That's not a compliment."

"Somehow, I don't think we'll ever be enemies, Dominique, if that's what you'd like."

"No, I don't think we'll ever be enemies, Ellsworth. You're the most comforting person I know."

"Of course."

"In the sense I mean?"

"In any sense you wish."

On the desk before her lay the rotogravure section of the Sunday Chronicle. It was folded on the page that bore the drawing of the Enright House. She picked it up and held it out to him, her eyes narrowed in a silent question. He looked at the drawing, then his glance moved to her face and returned to the drawing. He let the paper drop back on the desk.

"As independent as an insult, isn't it?" he said.

"You know, Ellsworth, I think the man who designed this should have committed suicide. A man who can conceive a thing as beautiful as this should never allow it to be erected. He should not want to exist. But he will let it be built, so that women will hang out diapers on his terraces, so that men will spit on his stairways and draw dirty pictures on his walls. He's given it to them and he's made it part of them, part of everything. He shouldn't have offered it for men like you to look at. For men like you to talk about. He's defiled his own work by the first word you'll utter about it. He's made himself worse than you are. You'll be committing only a mean little indecency, but he's committed a sacrilege. A man who knows what he must have known to produce this should not have been able to remain alive."

"Going to write a piece about this?" he asked.

"No. That would be repeating his crime."

"And talking to me about it?"

She looked at him. He was smiling pleasantly.

"Yes of course," she said, "that's part of the same crime also."

"Let's have dinner together one of these days, Dominique," he said. "You really don't let me see enough of you."

"All right," she said. "Anytime you wish."

At his trial for the assault on Ellsworth Toohey, Steven Mallory refused to disclose his motive. He made no statement. He seemed indifferent to any possible sentence. But Ellsworth Toohey created a minor sensation when he appeared, unsolicited, in Mallory's defense. He pleaded with the judge for leniency; he explained that he had no desire to see Mallory's future and career destroyed. Everybody in the courtroom was touched — except Steven Mallory. Steven Mallory listened and looked as if he were enduring some special process of cruelty. The judge gave him two years and suspended the sentence.

There was a great deal of comment on Toohey's extraordinary generosity. Toohey dismissed all praise, gaily and modestly. "My friends," was his remark — the one to appear in all the papers — "I refuse to be an accomplice in the manufacturing of martyrs."

At the first meeting of the proposed organization of young architects Keating concluded that Toohey had a wonderful ability for choosing people who fitted well together. There was an air about the eighteen persons present which he could not define, but which gave him a sense of comfort, a security he had not experienced in solitude or in any other gathering; and part of the comfort was the knowledge that all the others felt the same way for the same unaccountable reason. It was a feeling of brotherhood, but somehow not of a sainted or noble brotherhood; yet this precisely was the comfort — that one felt, among them, no necessity for being sainted or noble.

Were it not for this kinship, Keating would have been disappointed in the gathering. Of the eighteen seated about Toohey's living room, none was an architect of distinction, except himself and Gordon L. Prescott, who wore a beige turtle-neck sweater and looked faintly patronizing, but eager. Keating had never heard the names of the others. Most of them were beginners, young, poorly dressed and belligerent. Some were only draftsmen. There was one woman architect who had built a few small private homes, mainly for wealthy widows; she had an aggressive manner, a tight mouth and a fresh petunia in her hair. There was a boy with pure, innocent eyes. There was an obscure contractor with a fat, expressionless face. There was a tall, dry woman who was an interior decorator, and another woman of no definite occupation at all.

Keating could not understand what exactly was to be the purpose of the group, though there was a great deal of talk. None of the talk was too coherent, but all of it seemed to have the same undercurrent. He felt that the undercurrent was the one thing clear among all the vague generalities, even though nobody would mention it. It held him there, as it held the others, and he had no desire to define it.

The young men talked a great deal about injustice, unfairness, the cruelty of society toward youth, and suggested that everyone should have his future commissions guaranteed when he left college. The woman architect shrieked briefly something about the iniquity of the rich. The contractor barked that it was a hard world and that "fellows gotta help one another." The boy with the innocent eyes pleaded that "we could do so much good ... " His voice had a note of desperate sincerity which seemed embarrassing and out of place. Gordon L. Prescott declared that the A.G.A. was a bunch of old fogies with no conception of social responsibility and not a drop of virile blood in the lot of them, and that it was time to kick them in the pants anyway. The woman of indefinite occupation spoke about ideals and causes, though nobody could gather just what these were.

Peter Keating was elected chairman, unanimously. Gordon L. Prescott was elected vice-chairman and treasurer. Toohey declined all nominations. He declared that he would act only as an unofficial advisor. It was decided that the organization would be named the "Council of American Builders." It was decided that membership would not be restricted to architects, but would be open to "allied crafts" and to "all those holding the interests of the great profession of building at heart."

Then Toohey spoke. He spoke at some length, standing up, leaning on the knuckles of one hand against a table. His great voice was soft and persuasive. It filled the room, but it made his listeners realize that it could have filled a Roman amphitheater; there was something subtly flattering in this realization, in the sound of the powerful voice being held in check for their benefit.

" ... and thus, my friends, what the architectural profession lacks is an understanding of its own social importance. This lack is due to a double cause: to the anti-social nature of our entire society and to your own inherent modesty. You have been conditioned to think of yourselves merely as breadwinners with no higher purpose than to earn your fees and the means of your own existence. Isn't it time, my friends, to pause and to redefine your position in society? Of all the crafts, yours is the most important. Important, not in the amount of money you might make, not in the degree of artistic skill you might exhibit, but in the service you render to your fellow men. You are those who provide mankind's shelter. Remember this and then look at our cities, at our slums, to realize the gigantic task awaiting you. But to meet this challenge you must be armed with a broader vision of yourselves and of your work. You are not hired lackeys of the rich. You are crusaders in the cause of the underprivileged and the unsheltered. Not by what we are shall we be judged, but by those we serve. Let us stand united in this spirit. Let us — in all matters — be faithful to this new, broader, higher perspective. Let us organize — well, my friends, shall I say — a nobler dream?"

Keating listened avidly. He had always thought of himself as a breadwinner bent upon earning his fees, in a profession he had chosen because his mother had wanted him to choose it. It was gratifying to discover that he was much more than this; that his daily activity carried a nobler significance. It was pleasant and it was drugging. He knew that all the others in the room felt it also.

" ... and when our system of society collapses, the craft of builders will not be swept under, it will be swept up to greater prominence and greater recognition ... "

The doorbell rang. Then Toohey's valet appeared for an instant, holding the door of the living room open to admit Dominique Francon.

By the manner in which Toohey stopped, on a half-uttered word, Keating knew that Dominique had not been invited or expected. She smiled at Toohey, shook her head and moved one hand in a gesture telling him to continue. He managed a faint bow in her direction, barely more than a movement of his eyebrows, and went on with his speech. It was a pleasant greeting and its informality included the guest in the intimate brotherhood of the occasion, but it seemed to Keating that it had come just one beat too late. He had never before seen Toohey miss the right moment.

Dominique sat down in a corner, behind the others. Keating forgot to listen for a while, trying to attract her attention. He had to wait until her eyes had traveled thoughtfully about the room, from face to face, and stopped on his. He bowed and nodded vigorously, with the smile of greeting a private possession. She inclined her head, he saw her lashes touching her cheeks for an instant as her eyes closed, and then she looked at him again. She sat looking at him for a long moment, without smiling, as if she were rediscovering something in his face. He had not seen her since spring. He thought that she looked a little tired and lovelier than his memory of her.

Then he turned to Ellsworth Toohey once more and he listened. The words he heard were as stirring as ever, but his pleasure in them had an edge of uneasiness. He looked at Dominique. She did not belong in this room, at this meeting. He could not say why, but the certainty of it was enormous and oppressive. It was not her beauty, it was not her insolent elegance. But something made her an outsider. It was as if they had all been comfortably naked, and a person had entered fully clothed, suddenly making them self-conscious and indecent. Yet she did nothing. She sat listening attentively. Once, she leaned back, crossing her legs, and lighted a cigarette. She shook the flame off the match with a brusque little jerk of her wrist and she dropped the match into an ash tray on a table beside her. He saw her drop the match into the ash tray; he felt as if that movement of her wrist had tossed the match into all their faces. He thought that he was being preposterous. But he noticed that Ellsworth Toohey never looked at her as he spoke.

When the meeting ended, Toohey rushed over to her.

"Dominique, my dear!" he said brightly. "Shall I consider myself flattered?"

"If you wish."

"Had I known that you were interested, I would have sent you a very special invitation."

"But you didn't think I'd be interested?"

"No, frankly, I ... "

"That was a mistake, Ellsworth. You discounted my newspaperwoman's instinct. Never miss a scoop. It's not often that one has the chance to witness the birth of a felony."

"Just exactly what do you mean, Dominique?" asked Keating, his voice sharp.

She turned to him. "Hello, Peter."

"You know Peter Keating, of course?" Toohey smiled at her.

"Oh, yes. Peter was in love with me once."

"You're using the wrong tense, Dominique," said Keating.

"You must never take seriously anything Dominique chooses to say, Peter. She does not intend us to take it seriously. Would you like to join our little group, Dominique? Your professional qualifications make you eminently eligible."

"No, Ellsworth. I wouldn't like to join your little group. I really don't hate you enough to do that."

"Just why do you disapprove of it?" snapped Keating.

"Why, Peter!" she drawled. "Whatever gave you that idea? I don't disapprove of it at all. Do I, Ellsworth? I think it's a proper undertaking in answer to an obvious necessity. It's just what we all need — and deserve."

"Can we count on your presence at our next meeting?" Toohey asked. "It is pleasant to have so understanding a listener who will not be in the way at all — at our next meeting, I mean."

"No, Ellsworth. Thank you. It was merely curiosity. Though you do have an interesting group of people here. Young builders. By the way, why didn't you invite that man who designed the Enright House — what's his name? — Howard Roark?"

Keating felt his jaw snap tight. But she looked at them innocently, she had said it lightly, in the tone of a casual remark — surely, he thought, she did not mean ... what? he asked himself and added: she did not mean whatever it was he'd thought for a moment she meant, whatever had terrified him in that moment.

"I have never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Roark," Toohey answered gravely.

"Do you know him?" Keating asked her.

"No," she answered. "I've merely seen a sketch of the Enright House."

"And?" Keating insisted. "What do you think of it?"

"I don't think of it," she answered.

When she turned to leave, Keating accompanied her. He looked at her in the elevator, on their way down. He saw her hand, in a tight black glove, holding the flat corner of a pocket-book. The limp carelessness of her fingers was insolent and inviting at once. He felt himself surrendering to her again. "Dominique, why did you actually come here today?"

"Oh, I haven't been anywhere for a long time and I decided to start in with that. You know, when I go swimming I don't like to torture myself getting into cold water by degrees. I dive right in and it's a nasty shock, but after that the rest is not so hard to take."

"What do you mean? What do you really see that's so wrong with that meeting? After all, we're not planning to do anything definite. We don't have any actual program. I don't even know what we were there for."

"That's it, Peter. You don't even know what you were there for."

"It's only a group for fellows to get together. Mostly to talk. What harm is there in that?"

"Peter, I'm tired."

"Well, did your appearance tonight mean at least that you're coming out of your seclusion?"

"Yes. Just that ... My seclusion?"

"I've tried and tried to get in touch with you, you know."

"Have you?"

"Shall I begin to tell you how happy I am to see you again?"

"No. Let's consider that you've told me."

"You know, you've changed, Dominique. I don't know exactly in what way, but you've changed."

"Have I?"

"Let's consider that I've told you how lovely you are, because I can't find words to say it."

The streets were dark. He called a cab. Sitting close to her, he turned and looked at her directly, his glance compelling like an open hint, hoping to make the silence significant between them. She did not turn away. She sat studying his face. She seemed to be wondering, attentive to some thought of her own which he could not guess. He reached over slowly and took her hand. He felt an effort in her hand, he could feel through her rigid fingers the effort of her whole arm, not an effort to withdraw her hand, but to let him hold it. He raised the hand, turned it over and pressed his lips to her wrist.

Then he looked at her face. He dropped her hand and it remained suspended in the air for an instant, the fingers stiff, half closed. This was not the indifference he remembered. This was revulsion, so great that it became impersonal, it could not offend him, it seemed to include more than his person. He was suddenly aware of her body; not in desire or resentment, but just aware of its presence close to him, under her dress. He whispered involuntarily:

"Dominique, who was he?"

She whirled to face him. Then he saw her eyes narrowing. He saw her lips relaxing, growing fuller, softer, her mouth lengthening slowly into a faint smile, without opening. She answered, looking straight at him:

"A workman in the granite quarry."

She succeeded; he laughed aloud.

"Serves me right, Dominique. I shouldn't suspect the impossible."

"Peter, isn't it strange? It was you that I thought I could make myself want, at one time."

"Why is that strange?"

"Only in thinking how little we know about ourselves. Some day you'll know the truth about yourself too, Peter, and it will be worse for you than for most of us. But you don't have to think about it. It won't come for a long time."

"You did want me, Dominique?"

"I thought I could never want anything and you suited that so well."

"I don't know what you mean. I don't know what you ever think you're saying. I know that I'll always love you. And I won't let you disappear again. Now that you're back ... "

"Now that I'm back, Peter, I don't want to see you again. Oh, I'll have to see you when we run into each other, as we will, but don't call on me. Don't come to see me. I'm not trying to offend you, Peter. It's not that. You've done nothing to make me angry. It's something in myself that I don't want to face again. I'm sorry to choose you as the example. But you suit so well. You — Peter, you're everything I despise in the world and I don't want to remember how much I despise it. If I let myself remember — I'll return to it. This is not an insult to you, Peter. Try to understand that. You're not the worst of the world. You're its best. That's what's frightening. If I ever come back to you — don't let me come. I'm saying this now because I can, but if I come back to you, you won't be able to stop me, and now is the only time when I can warn you."

"I don't know," he said in cold fury, his lips stiff, "what you're talking about."

"Don't try to know. It doesn't matter. Let's just stay away from each other. Shall we?"

"I'll never give you up."

She shrugged. "All right, Peter. This is the only time I've ever been kind to you. Or to anyone."

6.

ROGER ENRIGHT had started life as a coal miner in Pennsylvania. On his way to the millions he now owned, no one had ever helped him. "That," he explained, "is why no one has ever stood in my way." A great many things and people had stood in his way, however; but he had never noticed them. Many incidents of his long career were not admired; none was whispered about. His career had been glaring and public like a billboard. He made a poor subject for blackmailers or debunking biographers. Among the wealthy he was disliked for having become wealthy so crudely.

He hated bankers, labor unions, women, evangelists and the stock exchange. He had never bought a share of stock nor sold a share in any of his enterprises, and he owned his fortune single-handed, as simply as if he carried all his cash in his pocket. Besides his oil business he owned a publishing house, a restaurant, a radio shop, a garage, a plant manufacturing electric refrigerators. Before each new venture he studied the field for a long time, then proceeded to act as if he had never heard of it, upsetting all precedent. Some of his ventures were successful, others failed. He continued running them all with ferocious energy. He worked twelve hours a day.

When he decided to erect a building, he spent six months looking for an architect. Then he hired Roark at the end of their first interview, which lasted half an hour. Later, when the drawings were made, he gave orders to proceed with construction at once. When Roark began to speak about the drawings, Enright interrupted him: "Don't explain. It's no use explaining abstract ideals to me. I've never had any ideals. People say I'm completely immoral. I go only by what I like. But I do know what I like."

Roark never mentioned the attempt he had made to reach Enright, nor his interview with the bored secretary. Enright learned of it somehow. Within five minutes the secretary was discharged, and within ten minutes he was walking out of the office, as ordered, in the middle of a busy day, a letter left half typed in his machine.

Roark reopened his office, the same big room on the top of an old building. He enlarged it by the addition of an adjoining room — for the draftsmen he hired in order to keep up with the planned lightning schedule of construction. The draftsmen were young and without much experience. He had never heard of them before and he did not ask for letters of recommendation. He chose them from among many applicants, merely by glancing at their drawings for a few minutes.

In the crowded tension of the days that followed he never spoke to them, except of their work. They felt, entering the office in the morning, that they had no private lives, no significance and no reality save the overwhelming reality of the broad sheets of paper on their tables. The place seemed cold and soulless like a factory, until they looked at him; then they thought that it was not a factory, but a furnace fed on their bodies, his own first.

There were times when he remained in the office all night. They found him still working when they returned in the morning. He did not seem tired. Once he stayed there for two days and two nights in succession. On the afternoon of the third day he fell asleep, half lying across his table. He awakened in a few hours, made no comment and walked from one table to another, to see what had been done. He made corrections, his words sounding as if nothing had interrupted a thought begun some hours ago.

"You're unbearable when you're working, Howard," Austen Heller told him one evening, even though he had not spoken of his work at all.

"Why?" he asked, astonished.

"It's uncomfortable to be in the same room with you. Tension is contagious, you know."

"What tension? I feel completely natural only when I'm working."

"That's it. You're completely natural only when you're one inch from bursting into pieces. What in hell are you really made of, Howard? After all, it's only a building. It's not the combination of holy sacrament, Indian torture and sexual ecstasy that you seem to make of it."

"Isn't it?"

He did not think of Dominique often, but when he did, the thought was not a sudden recollection, it was the acknowledgment of a continuous presence that needed no acknowledgment. He wanted her. He knew where to find her. He waited. It amused him to wait, because he knew that the waiting was unbearable to her. He knew that his absence bound her to him in a manner more complete and humiliating than his presence could enforce. He was giving her time to attempt an escape, in order to let her know her own helplessness when he chose to see her again. She would know that the attempt itself had been of his choice, that it had been only another form of mastery. Then she would be ready either to kill him or to come to him of her own will. The two acts would be equal in her mind. He wanted her brought to this. He waited.

The construction of the Enright House was about to begin, when Roark was summoned to the office of Joel Sutton. Joel Sutton, a successful businessman, was planning the erection of a huge office building. Joel Sutton had based his success on the faculty of understanding nothing about people. He loved everybody. His love admitted no distinctions. It was a great leveler; it could hold no peaks and no hollows, as the surface of a bowl of molasses could not hold them.

Joe Sutton met Roark at a dinner given by Enright. Joel Sutton liked Roark. He admired Roark. He saw no difference between Roark and anyone else. When Roark came to his office, Joel Sutton declared:

"Now I'm not sure, I'm not sure, I'm not sure at all, but I thought that I might consider you for that little building I have in mind. Your Enright House is sort of ... peculiar, but it's attractive, all buildings are attractive, love buildings, don't you? — and Rog Enright is a very smart man, an exceedingly smart man, he coins money where nobody else'd think it grew. I'll take a tip from Rog Enright any time, what's good enough for Rog Enright is good enough for me."

Roark waited for weeks after that first interview. Joel Sutton never made up his mind in a hurry.

On an evening in December Austen Heller called on Roark without warning and declared that he must accompany him next Friday to a formal party given by Mrs. Ralston Holcombe.

"Hell, no, Austen," said Roark.

"Listen, Howard, just exactly why not? Oh, I know, you hate that sort of thing, but that's not a good reason. On the other hand, I can give you many excellent ones for going. The place is a kind of house of assignation for architects and, of course, you'd sell anything there is to you for a building — oh, I know, for your kind of building, but still you'd sell the soul you haven't got, so can't you stand a few hours of boredom for the sake of future possibilities?"

"Certainly. Only I don't believe that this sort of thing ever leads to any possibilities."

"Will you go this time?"

"Why particularly this time?"

"Well, in the first place, that infernal pest Kiki Holcombe demands it. She spent two hours yesterday demanding it and made me miss a luncheon date. It spoils her reputation to have a building like the Enright House going up in town and not be able to display its architect in her salon. It's a hobby. She collects architects. She insisted that I must bring you and I promised I would."

"What for?"

"Specifically, she's going to have Joel Sutton there next Friday. Try, if it kills you, to be nice to him. He's practically decided to give you that building, from what I hear. A little personal contact might be all that's needed to set it. He's got a lot of others after him. They'll all be there. I want you there. I want you to get that building. I don't want to hear anything about granite quarries for the next ten years. I don't like granite quarries."

Roark sat on a table, his hands clasping the table's edge to keep himself still. He was exhausted after fourteen hours spent in his office, he thought he should be exhausted, but he could not feel it. He made his shoulders sag in an effort to achieve a relaxation that would not come; his arms were tense, drawn, and one elbow shuddered in a thin, continuous quiver. His long legs were spread apart, one bent and still, with the knee resting on the table, the other hanging down straight from the hip over the table's edge, swinging impatiently. It was so difficult these days to force himself to rest.

His new home was one large room in a small, modern apartment house on a quiet street. He had chosen the house because it had no cornices over the windows and no paneling on the walls inside. His room contained a few pieces of simple furniture; it looked clean, vast and empty; one expected to hear echoes from its corners.

"Why not go, just once?" said Heller. "It won't be too awful. It might even amuse you. You'll see a lot of your old friends there. John Erik Snyte, Peter Keating, Guy Francon and his daughter — you should meet his daughter. Have you ever read her stuff?"

"I'll go," said Roark abruptly.

"You're unpredictable enough even to be sensible at times. I'll call for you at eight-thirty Friday. Black tie. Do you own a tux, by the way?"

"Enright made me get one."

"Enright is a very sensible man."

When Heller left, Roark remained sitting on the table for a long time. He had decided to go to the party, because he knew that it would be the last of all places where Dominique could wish to meet him again.

"There is nothing as useless, my dear Kiki," said Ellsworth Toohey, "as a rich woman who makes herself a profession of entertaining. But then, all useless things have charm. Like aristocracy, for instance, the most useless conception of all."

Kiki Holcombe wrinkled her nose in a cute little pout of reproach, but she liked the comparison to aristocracy. Three crystal chandeliers blazed over her Florentine ballroom, and when she looked up at Toohey the lights stood reflected in her eyes, making them a moist collection of sparks between heavy, beaded lashes.

"You say disgusting things, Ellsworth. I don't know why I keep on inviting you."

"That is precisely why, my dear. I think I shall be invited here as often as I wish."

"What can a mere woman do against that?"

"Never start an argument with Mr. Toohey," said Mrs. Gillespie, a tall woman wearing a necklace of large diamonds, the size of the teeth she bared when she smiled. "It's no use. We're beaten in advance."

"Argument, Mrs. Gillespie," he said, "is one of the things that has neither use nor charm. Leave it to the men of brains. Brains, of course, are a dangerous confession of weakness. It has been said that men develop brains when they have failed in everything else."

"Now you don't mean that at all," said Mrs. Gillespie, while her smile accepted it as a pleasant truth. She took possession of him triumphantly and led him away as a prize stolen from Mrs. Holcombe who had turned aside for a moment to greet new guests. "But you men of intellect are such children. You're so sensitive. One must pamper you."

"I wouldn't do that, Mrs. Gillespie. We'll take advantage of it. And to display one's brain is so vulgar. It's even more vulgar than to display one's wealth."

"Oh dear, you would get that in, wouldn't you? Now of course I've heard that you're some sort of a radical, but I won't take it seriously. Not one bit. How do you like that?"

"I like it very much," said Toohey.

"You can't kid me. You can't make me think that you're one of the dangerous kind. The dangerous kind are all dirty and use bad grammar. And you have such a beautiful voice!"

"Whatever made you think that I aspired to be dangerous, Mrs. Gillespie? I'm merely — well, shall we say? that mildest of all things, a conscience. Your own conscience, conveniently personified in the body of another person and attending to your concern for the less fortunate of this world, thus leaving you free not to attend to."

"Well, what a quaint idea! I don't know whether it's horrible or very wise indeed."

"Both, Mrs. Gillespie. As all wisdom."

Kiki Holcombe surveyed her ballroom with satisfaction. She looked up at the twilight of the ceiling, left untouched above the chandeliers, and she noted how far it was above the guests, how dominant and undisturbed. The huge crowd of guests did not dwarf her hall; it stood over them like a square box of space, grotesquely out of scale; and it was this wasted expanse of air imprisoned above them that gave the occasion an aspect of regal luxury; it was like the lid of a jewel case, unnecessarily large over a flat bottom holding a single small gem.

The guests moved in two broad, changing currents that drew them all, sooner or later, toward two whirlpools; at the center of one stood Ellsworth Toohey, of the other — Peter Keating. Evening clothes were not becoming to Ellsworth Toohey; the rectangle of white shirt front prolonged his face, stretching him out into two dimensions; the wings of his tie made his thin neck look like that of a plucked chicken, pale, bluish and ready to be twisted by a single movement of some strong fist. But he wore his clothes better than any man present. He wore them with the careless impertinence of utter ease in the unbecoming, and the very grotesqueness of his appearance became a declaration of his superiority, a superiority great enough to warrant disregard of so much ungainliness.

He was saying to a somber young female who wore glasses and a low-cut evening gown: "My dear, you will never be more than a dilettante of the intellect, unless you submerge yourself in some cause greater than yourself."

He was saying to an obese gentlemen with a face turning purple in the heat of an argument: "But, my friend, I might not like it either. I merely said that such happens to be the inevitable course of history. And who are you or I to oppose the course of history?"

He was saying to an unhappy young architect: "No, my boy, what I have against you is not the bad building you designed, but the bad taste you exhibited in whining about my criticism of it. You should be careful. Someone might say that you can neither dish it out nor take it."

He was saying to a millionaire's widow: "Yes, I do think it would be a good idea if you made a contribution to the Workshop of Social Study. It would be a way of taking part in the great human stream of cultural achievement, without upsetting your routine or your digestion."

Those around him were saying: "Isn't he witty? And such courage!"

Peter Keating smiled radiantly. He felt the attention and admiration flowing toward him from every part of the ballroom. He looked at the people, all these trim, perfumed, silk-rustling people lacquered with light, dripping with light, as they had all been dripping with shower water a few hours ago, getting ready to come here and stand in homage before a man named Peter Keating. There were moments when he forgot that he was Peter Keating and he glanced at a mirror, at his own figure, he wanted to join in the general admiration for it.

Once the current left him face to face with Ellsworth Toohey. Keating smiled like a boy emerging from a stream on a summer day, glowing, invigorated, restless with energy. Toohey stood looking at him; Toohey's hands had slipped negligently into his trouser pockets, making his jacket flare out over his thin hips; he seemed to teeter faintly on his small feet; his eyes were attentive in enigmatic appraisal.

"Now this, Ellsworth ... this ... isn't it a wonderful evening?" said Keating, like a child to a mother who would understand, and a little like a drunk.

"Being happy, Peter? You're quite the sensation tonight. Little Peter seems to have crossed the line into a big celebrity. It happens like this, one can never tell exactly when or why ... There's someone here, though, who seems to be ignoring you quite flagrantly, doesn't she?"

Keating winced. He wondered when and how Toohey had had the time to notice that.

"Oh, well," said Toohey, "the exception proves the rule. Regrettable, however. I've always had the absurd idea that it would take a most unusual man to attract Dominique Francon. So of course I thought of you. Just an idle thought. Still, you know, the man who'll get her will have something you won't be able to match. He'll beat you there."

"No one's got her," snapped Keating.

"No, undoubtedly not. Not yet. That's rather astonishing. Oh, I suppose it will take an extraordinary kind of man."

"Look here, what in hell are you doing? You don't like Dominique Francon. Do you?"

"I never said I did."

A little later Keating heard Toohey saying solemnly in the midst of some earnest discussion: "Happiness? But that is so middle-class. What is happiness? There are so many things in life so much more important than happiness."

Keating made his way slowly toward Dominique. She stood leaning back, as if the air were a support solid enough for her thin, naked shoulder blades. Her evening gown was the color of glass. He had the feeling that he should be able to see the wall behind her, through her body. She seemed too fragile to exist; and that very fragility spoke of some frightening strength which held her anchored to existence with a body insufficient for reality.

When he approached, she made no effort to ignore him; she turned to him, she answered; but the monotonous precision of her answers stopped him, made him helpless, made him leave her in a few moments.

When Roark and Heller entered, Kiki Holcombe met them at the door. Heller presented Roark to her, and she spoke as she always did, her voice like a shrill rocket sweeping all opposition aside by sheer speed.

"Oh, Mr. Roark, I've been so eager to meet you! We've all heard so much about you! Now I must warn you that my husband doesn't approve of you — oh, purely on artistic grounds, you understand — but don't let that worry you, you have an ally in this household, an enthusiastic ally!"

"It's very kind, Mrs. Holcombe," said Roark. "And perhaps unnecessary."

"Oh, I adore your Enright House! Of course, I can't say that it represents my own esthetic convictions, but people of culture must keep their minds open to anything, I mean, to include any viewpoint in creative art, we must be broad-minded above all, don't you think so?"

"I don't know," said Roark. "I've never been broad-minded."

She was certain that he intended no insolence; it was not in his voice nor his manner; but insolence had been her first impression of him. He wore evening clothes and they looked well on his tall, thin figure, but somehow it seemed that he did not belong in them; the orange hair looked preposterous with formal dress; besides, she did not like his face; that face suited a work gang or an army, it had no place in her drawing room. She said:

"We've all been so interested in your work. Your first building?"

"My fifth."

"Oh, indeed? Of course. How interesting."

She clasped her hands, and turned to greet a new arrival. Heller said:

"Whom do you want to meet first? ... There's Dominique Francon looking at us. Come on."

Roark turned; he saw Dominique standing alone across the room. There was no expression on her face, not even an effort to avoid expression; it was strange to see a human face presenting a bone structure and an arrangement of muscles, but no meaning, a face as a simple anatomical feature, like a shoulder or an arm, not a mirror of sensate perception any longer. She looked at them as they approached. Her feet stood posed oddly, two small triangles pointed straight and parallel, as if there were no floor around her but the few square inches under her soles and she were safe so long as she did not move or look down. He felt a violent pleasure, because she seemed too fragile to stand the brutality of what he was doing; and because she stood it so well.

"Miss Francon, may I present Howard Roark?" said Heller.

He had not raised his voice to pronounce the name; he wondered why it had sounded so stressed; then he thought that the silence had caught the name and held it still; but there had been no silence: Roark's face was politely blank and Dominique was saying correctly:

"How do you do, Mr. Roark."

Roark bowed: "How do you do, Miss Francon."

She said: "The Enright House ... "

She said it as if she had not wanted to pronounce these three words; and as if they named, not a house, but many things beyond it.

Roark said: "Yes, Miss Francon."

Then she smiled, the correct, perfunctory smile with which one greets an introduction. She said:

"I know Roger Enright. He is almost a friend of the family."

"I haven't had the pleasure of meeting many friends of Mr. Enright."

"I remember once Father invited him to dinner. It was a miserable dinner. Father is called a brilliant conversationalist, but he couldn't bring a sound out of Mr. Enright. Roger just sat there. One must know Father to realize what a defeat it was for him."

"I have worked for your father" — her hand had been moving and it stopped in midair — "a few years ago, as a draftsman."

Her hand dropped. "Then you can see that Father couldn't possibly get along with Roger Enright."

"No. He couldn't."

"I think Roger almost liked me, though, but he's never forgiven me for working on a Wynand paper."

Standing between them, Heller thought that he had been mistaken; there was nothing strange in this meeting; in fact, there simply was nothing. He felt annoyed that Dominique did not speak of architecture, as one would have expected her to do; he concluded regretfully that she disliked this man, as she disliked most people she met.

Then Mrs. Gillespie caught hold of Heller and led him away. Roark and Dominique were left alone. Roark said:

"Mr. Enright reads every paper in town. They are all brought to his office — with the editorial pages cut out."

"He's always done that. Roger missed his real vocation. He should have been a scientist. He has such a love for facts and such contempt for commentaries."

"On the other hand, do you know Mr. Fleming?" he asked.

"No."

"He's a friend of Heller's. Mr. Fleming never reads anything but editorial pages. People like to hear him talk."

She watched him. He was looking straight at her, very politely, as any man would have looked, meeting her for the first time. She wished she could find some hint in his face, if only a hint of his old derisive smile; even mockery would be an acknowledgment and a tie; she found nothing. He spoke as a stranger. He allowed no reality but that of a man introduced to her in a drawing room, flawlessly obedient to every convention of deference. She faced this respectful formality, thinking that her dress had nothing to hide from him, that he had used her for a need more intimate than the use of the food he ate — while he stood now at a distance of a few feet from her, like a man who could not possibly permit himself to come closer. She thought that this was his form of mockery, after what he had not forgotten and would not acknowledge. She thought that he wanted her to be first to name it, he would bring her to the humiliation of accepting the past — by being first to utter the word recalling it to reality; because he knew that she could not leave it unrecalled.

"And what does Mr. Fleming do for a living?" she asked.

"He's a manufacturer of pencil sharpeners."

"Really? A friend of Austen's?"

"Austen knows many people. He says that's his business."

"Is he successful?"

"Who, Miss Francon? I'm not sure about Austen, but Mr. Fleming is very successful. He has branch factories in New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island."

"You're wrong about Austen, Mr. Roark. He's very successful. In his profession and mine you're successful if it leaves you untouched."

"How does one achieve that?"

"In one of two ways: by not looking at people at all or by looking at everything about them."

"Which is preferable, Miss Francon?"

"Whichever is hardest."

"But a desire to choose the hardest might be a confession of weakness in itself."

"Of course, Mr. Roark. But it's the least offensive form of confession."

"If the weakness is there to be confessed at all."

Then someone came flying through the crowd, and an arm fell about Roark's shoulders. It was John Erik Snyte.

"Roark, well of all people to see here!" he cried. "So glad, so glad! Ages, hasn't it been? Listen, I want to talk to you! Let me have him for a moment, Dominique."

Roark bowed to her, his arms at his sides, a strand of hair falling forward, so that she did not see his face, but only the orange head bowed courteously for a moment, and he followed Snyte into the crowd.

Snyte was saying: "God, how you've come up these last few years! Listen, do you know whether Enright's planning to go into real estate in a big way, I mean, any other buildings up his sleeve?"

It was Heller who forced Snyte away and brought Roark to Joel Sutton. Joel Sutton was delighted. He felt that Roark's presence here removed the last of his doubts; it was a stamp of safety on Roark's person. Joel Sutton's hand closed about Roark's elbow, five pink, stubby fingers on the black sleeve. Joel Sutton gulped confidentially:

"Listen, kid, it's all settled. You're it. Now don't squeeze the last pennies out of me, all you architects are cutthroats and highway robbers, but I'll take a chance on you, you're a smart boy, snared old Rog, didn't you? So here you've got me swindled too, just about almost, that is, I'll give you a ring in a few days and we'll have a dogfight over the contract!"

Heller looked at them and thought that it was almost indecent to see them together: Roark's tall, ascetic figure, with that proud cleanliness peculiar to long-lined bodies, and beside him the smiling ball of meat whose decision could mean so much.

Then Roark began to speak about the future building, but Joel Sutton looked up at him, astonished and hurt. Joel Sutton had not come here to talk about buildings; parties were given for the purpose of enjoying oneself, and what greater joy could there be but to forget the important things of one's life? So Joel Sutton talked about badminton; that was his hobby; it was a patrician hobby, he explained, he was not being common like other men who wasted time on golf. Roark listened politely. He had nothing to say.

"You do play badminton, don't you?" Joel Sutton asked suddenly.

"No," said Roark.

"You don't?" gulped Joel Sutton. "You don't? Well, what a pity, oh what a rotten pity! I thought sure you did, with that lanky frame of yours you'd be good, you'd be a wow, I thought sure we'd beat the pants off of old Tompkins anytime while that building's being put up."

"While that building's being put up, Mr. Sutton, I wouldn't have the time to play anyway."

"What d'you mean, wouldn't have the time? What've you got draftsmen for? Hire a couple extra, let them worry, I'll be paying you enough, won't I? But then, you don't play, what a rotten shame, I thought sure ... The architect who did my building down on Canal Street was a whiz at badminton, but he died last year, got himself cracked up in an auto accident, damn him, was a fine architect, too. And here you don't play."

"Mr. Sutton, you're not really upset about it, are you?"

"I'm very seriously disappointed, my boy."

"But what are you actually hiring me for?"

"What am I what?"

"Hiring me for?"

"Why, to do a building of course."

"Do you really think it would be a better building if I played badminton?"

"Well, there's business and there's fun, there's the practical and there's the human end of it, oh, I don't mind, still I thought with a skinny frame like yours you'd surely ... but all right, all right, we can't have everything ... "

When Joel Sutton left him, Roark heard a bright voice saying: "Congratulations, Howard," and turned to find Peter Keating smiling at him radiantly and derisively.

"Hello, Peter. What did you say?"

"I said, congratulations on landing Joel Sutton. Only, you know, you didn't handle that very well."

"What?"

"Old Joel. Oh, of course, I heard most of it — why shouldn't I? — it was very entertaining. That's no way to go about it, Howard. You know what I would have done? I'd have sworn I'd played badminton since I was two years old and how it's the game of kings and earls and it takes a soul of rare distinction to appreciate it and by the time he'd put me to the test I'd have made it my business to play like an earl, too. What would it cost you?"

"I didn't think of it."

"It's a secret, Howard. A rare one. I'll give it to you free of charge with my compliments: always be what people want you to be. Then you've got them where you want them. I'm giving it free because you'll never make use of it. You'll never know how. You're brilliant in some respects, Howard, I've always said that — and terribly stupid in others."

"Possibly."

"You ought to try and learn a few things, if you're going in for playing the game through the Kiki Holcombe salon. Are you? Growing up, Howard? Though it did give me a shock to see you here of all places. Oh, and yes, congratulations on the Enright job, beautiful job as usual — where have you been all summer? — remind me to give you a lesson on how to wear a tux, God, but it looks silly on you! That's what I like, I like to see you looking silly, we're old friends, aren't we, Howard?"

"You're drunk, Peter."

"Of course I am. But I haven't touched a drop tonight, not a drop. What I'm drunk on — you'll never learn, never, it's not for you, and that's also part of what I'm drunk on, that it's not for you. You know, Howard, I love you. I really do. I do — tonight."

"Yes, Peter. You always will, you know."

Roark was introduced to many people and many people spoke to him. They smiled and seemed sincere in their efforts to approach him as a friend, to express appreciation, to display good will and cordial interest. But what he heard was: "The Enright House is magnificent. It's almost as good as the Cosmo-Slotnick Building."

"I'm sure you have a great future, Mr. Roark, believe me, I know the signs, you'll be another Ralston Holcombe." He was accustomed to hostility; this kind of benevolence was more offensive than hostility. He shrugged; he thought that he would be out of here soon and back in the simple, clean reality of his own office.

He did not look at Dominique again for the rest of the evening. She watched him in the crowd. She watched those who stopped him and spoke to him. She watched his shoulders stooped courteously as he listened. She thought that this, too, was his manner of laughing at her; he let her see him being delivered to the crowd before her eyes, being surrendered to any person who wished to own him for a few moments. He knew that this was harder for her to watch than the sun and the drill in the quarry. She stood obediently, watching. She did not expect him to notice her again; she had to remain there as long as he was in this room.

There was another person, that night, abnormally aware of Roark's presence, aware from the moment Roark had entered the room. Ellsworth Toohey had seen him enter. Toohey had never set eyes on him before and did not know him. But Toohey stood looking at him for a long time.

Then Toohey moved through the crowd, and smiled at his friends. But between smiles and sentences, his eyes went back to the man with the orange hair. He looked at the man as he looked occasionally at the pavement from a window on the thirtieth floor, wondering about his own body were it to be hurled down and what would happen when he struck against that pavement. He did not know the man's name, his profession or his past; he had no need to know; it was not a man to him, but only a force; Toohey never saw men. Perhaps it was the fascination of seeing that particular force so explicitly personified in a human body.

After a while he asked John Erik Snyte, pointing:

"Who is that man?"

"That?" said Snyte. "Howard Roark. You know, the Enright House."

"Oh," said Toohey.

"What?"

"Of course. It would be."

"Want to meet him?"

"No," said Toohey. "No, I don't want to meet him."

For the rest of the evening whenever some figure obstructed Toohey's view of the hall, his head would jerk impatiently to find Roark again. He did not want to look at Roark; he had to look; just as he always had to look down at that distant pavement, dreading the sight.

That evening, Ellsworth Toohey was conscious of no one but Roark. Roark did not know that Toohey existed in the room.

When Roark left, Dominique stood counting the minutes, to be certain that he would be lost to sight in the streets before she could trust herself to go out. Then she moved to leave.

Kiki Holcombe's thin, moist fingers clasped her hand in parting, clasped it vaguely and slipped up to hold her wrist for a moment.

"And, my dear," asked Kiki Holcombe, "what did you think of that new one, you know, I saw you talking to him, that Howard Roark?"

"I think," said Dominique firmly, "that he is the most revolting person I've ever met."

"Oh, now, really?"

"Do you care for that sort of unbridled arrogance? I don't know what one could say for him, unless it's that he's terribly good-looking, if that matters."

"Good-looking! Are you being funny, Dominique?"

Kiki Holcombe saw Dominique being stupidly puzzled for once. And Dominique realized that what she saw in his face, what made it the face of a god to her, was not seen by others; that it could leave them indifferent; that what she had thought to be the most obvious, inconsequential remark was, instead, a confession of something within her, some quality not shared by others.

"Why, my dear," said Kiki, "he's not good-looking at all, but extremely masculine."

"Don't let it astonish you, Dominique," said a voice behind her. "Kiki's esthetic judgment is not yours — nor mine."

Dominique turned. Ellsworth Toohey stood there, smiling, watching her face attentively.

"You ... " she began and stopped.

"Of course," said Toohey, bowing faintly in understanding affirmative of what she had not said. "Do give me credit for discernment, Dominique, somewhat equal to yours. Though not for esthetic enjoyment. I'll leave that part of it to you. But we do see things, at times, which are not obvious, don't we — you and I?"

"What things?"

"My dear, what a long philosophical discussion that would take, and how involved, and how — unnecessary. I've always told you that we should be good friends. We have so much in common intellectually. We start from opposite poles, but that makes no difference, because you see, we meet in the same point. It was a very interesting evening, Dominique."

"What are you driving at?"

"For instance, it was interesting to discover what sort of thing appears good-looking to you. It's nice to have you classified firmly, concretely. Without words — just with the aid of a certain face."

"If ... if you can see what you're talking about, you can't be what you are."

"No, my dear. I must be what I am, precisely because of what I see."

"You know, Ellsworth, I think you're much worse than I thought you were."

"And perhaps much worse than you're thinking now. But useful. We're all useful to one another. As you will be to me. As, I think, you will want to be."

"What are you talking about?"

"That's bad, Dominique. Very bad. So pointless. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I couldn't possibly explain it. If you do — I have you, already, without saying anything further."

"What kind of a conversation is this?" asked Kiki, bewildered.

"Just our way of kidding each other," said Toohey brightly. "Don't let it bother you, Kiki. Dominique and I are always kidding each other. Not very well, though, because you see — we can't."

"Some day, Ellsworth," said Dominique, "you'll make a mistake."

"Quite possible. And you, my dear, have made yours already."

"Good night, Ellsworth."

"Good night, Dominique."

Kiki turned to him when Dominique had gone.

"What's the matter with both of you, Ellsworth? Why such talk — over nothing at all? People's faces and first impressions don't mean a thing."

"That, my dear Kiki," he answered, his voice soft and distant, as if he were giving an answer, not to her, but to a thought of his own, "is one of our greatest common fallacies. There's nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we're not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge. Have you ever thought about the style of a soul, Kiki?"

"The ... what?"

"The style of a soul. Do you remember the famous philosopher who spoke of the style of a civilization? He called it 'style.' He said it was the nearest word he could find for it. He said that every civilization has its one basic principle, one single, supreme, determining conception, and every endeavor of men within that civilization is true, unconsciously and irrevocably, to that one principle ... I think, Kiki, that every human soul has a style of its own, also. Its one basic theme. You'll see it reflected in every thought, every act, every wish of that person. The one absolute, the one imperative in that living creature. Years of studying a man won't show it to you. His face will. You'd have to write volumes to describe a person. Think of his face. You need nothing else."

"That sounds fantastic, Ellsworth. And unfair, if true. It would leave people naked before you."

"It's worse than that. It also leaves you naked before them. You betray yourself by the manner in which you react to a certain face. To a certain kind of face ... The style of your soul ... There's nothing important on earth, except human beings. There's nothing as important about human beings as their relations to one another ... "

"Well, what do you see in my face?"

He looked at her, as if he had just noticed her presence.

"What did you say?"

"I said, what do you see in my face?"

"Oh ... yes ... well, tell me the movie stars you like and I'll tell you what you are."

"You know, I just love to be analyzed. Now let's see. My greatest favorite has always been ... "

But he was not listening. He had turned his back on her, he was walking away without apology. He looked tired. She had never seen him being rude before — except by intention.

A little later, from among a group of friends, she heard his rich, vibrant voice saying:

" ... and, therefore, the noblest conception on earth is that of men's absolute equality."

7.

" ... AND there it will stand, as a monument to nothing but the egotism of Mr. Enright and of Mr. Roark. It will stand between a row of brownstone tenements on one side and the tanks of a gashouse on the other. This, perhaps, is not an accident, but a testimonial to fate's sense of fitness. No other setting could bring out so eloquently the essential insolence of this building. It will rise as a mockery to all the structures of the city and to the men who built them. Our structures are meaningless and false; this building will make them more so. But the contrast will not be to its advantage. By creating the contrast it will have made itself a part of the great ineptitude, its most ludicrous part. If a ray of light falls into a pigsty, it is the ray that shows us the muck and it is the ray that is offensive. Our structures have the great advantage of obscurity and timidity. Besides, they suit us. The Enright House is bright and bold. So is a feather boa. It will attract attention — but only to the immense audacity of Mr. Roark's conceit. When this building is erected, it will be a wound on the face of our city. A wound, too, is colorful."

This appeared in the column "Your House" by Dominique Francon, a week after the party at the home of Kiki Holcombe.

On the morning of its appearance Ellsworth Toohey walked into Dominique's office. He held a copy of the Banner, with the page bearing her column turned toward her. He stood silently, rocking a little on his small feet. It seemed as if the expression of his eyes had to be heard, not seen: it was a visual roar of laughter. His lips were folded primly, innocently.

"Well?" she asked.

"Where did you meet Roark before that party?"

She sat looking at him, one arm flung over the back of her chair, a pencil dangling precariously between the tips of her fingers. She seemed to be smiling. She said:

"I had never met Roark before that party."

"My mistake. I was just wondering about ... " he made the paper rustle, " ... the change of sentiment."

"Oh, that? Well, I didn't like him when I met him — at the party."

"So I noticed."

"Sit down, Ellsworth. You don't look your best standing up."

"Do you mind? Not busy?"

"Not particularly."

He sat down on the corner of her desk. He sat, thoughtfully tapping his knee with the folded paper.

"You know, Dominique," he said, "it's not well done. Not well at all."

"Why?"

"Don't you see what can be read between the lines? Of course, not many will notice that. He will. I do."

"It's not written for him or for you."

"But for the others?"

"For the others."

"Then it's a rotten trick on him and me."

"You see? I thought it was well done."

"Well, everyone to his own methods."

"What are you going to write about it?"

"About what?"

"About the Enright House."

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

He threw the paper down on the desk, without moving, just flicking his wrist forward. He said:

"Speaking of architecture, Dominique, why haven't you ever written anything about the Cosmo-Slotnick Building?"

"Is it worth writing about?"

"Oh, decidedly. There are people whom it would annoy very much."

"And are those people worth annoying?"

"So it seems."

"What people?"

"Oh, I don't know. How can we know who reads our stuff? That's what makes it so interesting. All those strangers we've never seen before, have never spoken to, or can't speak to — and here's this paper where they can read our answer, if we want to give an answer. I really think you should dash off a few nice things about the Cosmo-Slotnick Building."

"You do seem to like Peter Keating very much."

"I? I'm awfully fond of Peter. You will be, too — eventually, when you know him better. Peter is a useful person to know. Why don't you take time, one of these days, to get him to tell you the story of his life? You'll learn many interesting things."

"For instance?"

"For instance, that he went to Stanton."

"I know that."

"You don't think it's interesting? I do, Wonderful place, Stanton. Remarkable example of Gothic architecture. The stained-glass window in the Chapel is really one of the finest in this country. And then, think, so many young students. All so different. Some graduating with high honors. Others being expelled."

"Well?"

"Did you know that Peter Keating is an old friend of Howard Roark?"

"No. Is he?"

"He is."

"Peter Keating is an old friend of everybody."

"Quite true. A remarkable boy. But this is different. You didn't know that Roark went to Stanton?"

"No."

"You don't seem to know very much about Mr. Roark."

"I don't know anything about Mr. Roark. We weren't discussing Mr. Roark."

"Weren't we? No, of course, we were discussing Peter Keating. Well, you see, one can make one's point best by contrast, by comparison. As you did in your pretty little article today. To appreciate Peter as he should be appreciated, let's follow up a comparison. Let's take two parallel lines. I'm inclined to agree with Euclid, I don't think these two parallels will ever meet. Well, they both went to Stanton. Peter's mother ran a sort of boardinghouse and Roark lived with them for three years. This doesn't really matter, except that it makes the contrast more eloquent and — well — more personal, later on. Peter graduated with high honors, the highest of his class. Roark was expelled. Don't look like that. I don't have to explain why he was expelled, we understand, you and I. Peter went to work for your father and he's a partner now. Roark worked for your father and got kicked out. Yes, he did. Isn't that funny, by the way? — he did, without any help from you at all — that time. Peter has the Cosmo-Slotnick Building to his credit — and Roark has a hot-dog stand in Connecticut. Peter signs autographs — and Roark is not known even to all the bathroom fixtures manufacturers. Now Roark's got an apartment house to do and it's precious to him like an only son — while Peter wouldn't even have noticed it had he got the Enright House, he gets them every day. Now, I don't think that Roark thinks very much of Peter's work. He never has and he never will, no matter what happens. Follow this a step further. No man likes to be beaten. But to be beaten by the man who has always stood as the particular example of mediocrity in his eyes, to start by the side of this mediocrity and to watch it shoot up, while he struggles and gets nothing but a boot in his face, to see the mediocrity snatch from him, one after another, the chances he'd give his life for, to see the mediocrity worshipped, to miss the place he wants and to see the mediocrity enshrined upon it, to lose, to be sacrificed, to be ignored, to be beaten, beaten, beaten — not by a greater genius, not by a god, but by a Peter Keating — well, my little amateur, do you think the Spanish Inquisition ever thought of a torture to equal this?"

"Ellsworth!" she screamed. "Get out of here!"

She had shot to her feet. She stood straight for a moment, then she slumped forward, her two palms flat on the desk, and she stood, bent over; he saw her smooth mass of hair swinging heavily, then hanging still, hiding her face.

"But, Dominique," he said pleasantly, "I was only telling you why Peter Keating is such an interesting person."

Her hair flew back like a mop, and her face followed, she dropped down on her chair, looking at him, her mouth loose and very ugly.

"Dominique," he said softly, "you're obvious. Much too obvious."

"Get out of here."

"Well, I've always said that you underestimated me. Call on me next time you need some help."

At the door, he turned to add:

"Of course, personally, I think Peter Keating is the greatest architect we've got."

That evening, when she came home, the telephone rang.

"Dominique, my dear," a voice gulped anxiously over the wire, "did you really mean all that?"

"Who is this?"

"Joel Sutton. I ... "

"Hello, Joel. Did I mean what?"

"Hello, dear, how are you? How is your charming father? I mean, did you mean all that about the Enright House and that fellow Roark? I mean, what you said in your column today. I'm quite a bit upset, quite a bit. You know about my building? Well, we're all ready to go ahead and it's such a bit of money, I thought I was very careful about deciding, but I trust you of all people, I've always trusted you, you're a smart kid, plenty smart, if you work for a fellow like Wynand I guess you know your stuff. Wynand knows buildings, why, that man's made more in real estate than on all his papers, you bet he did, it's not supposed to be known, but I know it. And you working for him, and now I don't know what to think. Because, you see, I had decided, yes, I had absolutely and definitely decided — almost — to have this fellow Roark, in fact I told him so, in fact he's coming over tomorrow afternoon to sign the contract, and now ... Do you really think it will look like a feather boa?"

"Listen, Joel," she said, her teeth set tight together, "can you have lunch with me tomorrow?"

She met Joel Sutton in the vast, deserted dining room of a distinguished hotel. There were few, solitary guests among the white tables, so that each stood out, the empty tables serving as an elegant setting that proclaimed the guest's exclusiveness. Joel Sutton smiled broadly. He had never escorted a woman as decorative as Dominique.

"You know, Joel," she said, facing him across a table, her voice quiet, set, unsmiling, "it was a brilliant idea, your choosing Roark."

"Oh, do you think so?"

"I think so. You'll have a building that will be beautiful, like an anthem. A building that will take your breath away — also your tenants. A hundred years from now they will write about you in history — and search for your grave in Potter's Field."

"Good heavens, Dominique, what are you talking about?"

"About your building. About the kind of building that Roark will design for you. It will be a great building, Joel."

"You mean, good?"

"I don't mean good. I mean great."

"It's not the same thing."

"No, Joel, no, it's not the same thing."

"I don't like this 'great' stuff."

"No. You don't. I didn't think you would. Then what do you want with Roark? You want a building that won't shock anybody. A building that will be folksy and comfortable and safe, like the old parlor back home that smells of clam chowder. A building that everybody will like, everybody and anybody. It's very uncomfortable to be a hero, Joel, and you don't have the figure for it."

"Well, of course I want a building that people will like. What do you think I'm putting it up for, for my health?"

"No, Joel. Nor for your soul."

"You mean, Roark's no good?"

She sat straight and stiff, as if all her muscles were drawn tight against pain. But her eyes were heavy, half closed, as if a hand were caressing her body. She said:

"Do you see many buildings that he's done? Do you see many people hiring him? There are six million people in the city of New York. Six million people can't be wrong. Can they?"

"Of course not."

"Of course."

"But I thought Enright ... "

"You're not Enright, Joel. For one thing, he doesn't smile so much. Then, you see, Enright wouldn't have asked my opinion. You did. That's what I like you for."

"Do you really like me, Dominique?"

"Didn't you know that you've always been one of my great favorites?"

"I ... I've always trusted you. I'll take your word anytime. What do you really think I should do?"

"It's simple. You want the best that money can buy — of what money can buy. You want a building that will be — what it deserves to be. You want an architect whom other people have employed, so that you can show them that you're just as good as they are."

"That's right. That's exactly right ... Look, Dominique, you've hardly touched your food."

"I'm not hungry."

"Well, what architect would you recommend?"

"Think, Joel. Who is there, at the moment, that everybody's talking about? Who gets the pick of all commissions? Who makes the most money for himself and his clients? Who's young and famous and safe and popular?"

"Why, I guess ... I guess Peter Keating."

"Yes, Joel. Peter Keating."

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Roark, so terribly sorry, believe me, but after all, I'm not in business for my health ... not for my health nor for my soul ... that is, I mean, well, I'm sure you can understand my position. And it's not that I have anything against you, quite the contrary, I think you're a great architect. You see that's just the trouble, greatness is fine but it's not practical. That's the trouble, Mr. Roark, not practical, and after all you must admit that Mr. Keating has much the better name and he's got that ... that popular touch which you haven't been able to achieve."

It disturbed Mr. Sutton that Roark did not protest. He wished Roark would try to argue; then he could bring forth the unanswerable justifications which Dominique had taught him a few hours ago. But Roark said nothing; he had merely inclined his head when he heard the decision. Mr. Sutton wanted desperately to utter the justifications, but it seemed pointless to try to convince a man who seemed convinced. Still, Mr. Sutton loved people and did not want to hurt anyone.

"As a matter of fact, Mr. Roark, I'm not alone in this decision. As a matter of fact, I did want you, I had decided on you, honestly I had, but it was Miss Dominique Francon, whose judgment I value most highly, who convinced me that you were not the right choice for this commission — and she was fair enough to allow me to tell you that she did."

He saw Roark looking at him suddenly. Then he saw the hollows of Roark's cheeks twisted, as if drawn in deeper, and his mouth open: he was laughing, without sound but for one sharp intake of breath.

"What on earth are you laughing at, Mr. Roark?"

"So Miss Francon wanted you to tell me this?"

"She didn't want me to, why should she? — she merely said that I could tell you if I wished."

"Yes, of course."

"Which only shows her honesty and that she had good reasons for her convictions and will stand by them openly."

"Yes."

"Well, what's the matter?"

"Nothing, Mr. Sutton."

"Look, it's not decent to laugh like that."

"No."

His room was half dark around him. A sketch of the Heller house was tacked, unframed, on a long, blank wall; it made the room seem emptier and the wall longer. He did not feel the minutes passing, but he felt time as a solid thing enclosed and kept apart within the room; time clear of all meaning save the unmoving reality of his body.

When he heard the knock at the door, he said: "Come in," without rising.

Dominique came in. She entered as if she had entered this room before. She wore a black suit of heavy cloth, simple like a child's garment, worn as mere protection, not as ornament; she had a high masculine collar raised to her cheeks, and a hat cutting half her face out of sight. He sat looking at her. She waited to see the derisive smile, but it did not come. The smile seemed implicit in the room itself, in her standing there, halfway across that room. She took her hat off, like a man entering a house, she pulled it off by the brim with the tips of stiff fingers and held it hanging down at the end of her arm. She waited, her face stern and cold; but her smooth pale hair looked defenseless and humble. She said:

"You are not surprised to see me."

"I expected you tonight."

She raised her hand, bending her elbow with a tight economy of motion, the bare minimum needed, and flung her hat across to a table. The hat's long flight showed the violence in that controlled jerk of her wrist.

He asked: "What do you want?"

She answered: "You know what I want," her voice heavy and flat.

"Yes. But I want to hear you say it. All of it."

"If you wish." Her voice had the sound of efficiency, obeying an order with metallic precision. "I want to sleep with you. Now, tonight, and at any time you may care to call me. I want your naked body, your skin, your mouth, your hands. I want you — like this — not hysterical with desire — but coldly and consciously — without dignity and without regrets — I want you — I have no self-respect to bargain with me and divide me — I want you — I want you like an animal, or a cat on a fence, or a whore."

She spoke on a single, level tone, as if she were reciting an austere catechism of faith. She stood without moving, her feet in flat shoes planted apart, her shoulders thrown back, her arms hanging straight at her sides. She looked impersonal, untouched by the words she pronounced, chaste like a young boy.

"You know that I hate you, Roark. I hate you for what you are, for wanting you, for having to want you. I'm going to fight you — and I'm going to destroy you — and I tell you this as calmly as I told you mat I'm a begging animal. I'm going to pray that you can't be destroyed — I tell you this, too — even though I believe in nothing and have nothing to pray to. But I will fight to block every step you take. I will fight to tear every chance you want away from you. I will hurt you through the only thing that can hurt you — through your work. I will fight to starve you, to strangle you on the things you won't be able to reach. I have done it to you today — and that is why I shall sleep with you tonight."

He sat deep in his chair, stretched out, his body relaxed, and taut in relaxation, a stillness being filled slowly with the violence of future motion.

"I have hurt you today. I'll do it again. I'll come to you whenever I have beaten you — whenever I know that I have hurt you — and I'll let you own me. I want to be owned, not by a lover, but by an adversary who will destroy my victory over him, not with honorable blows, but with the touch of his body on mine. That is what I want of you, Roark. That is what I am. You wanted to hear it all. You've heard it. What do you wish to say now?"

"Take your clothes off."

She stood still for a moment; two hard spots swelled and grew white under the corners of her mouth. Then she saw a movement in the cloth of his shirt, one jolt of controlled breath — and she smiled in her turn, derisively, as he had always smiled at her.

She lifted her two hands to her collar and unfastened the buttons of her jacket, simply, precisely, one after another. She threw the jacket down on the floor, she took off a thin white blouse, and she noticed the tight black gloves on the wrists of her naked arms. She took the gloves off, pulling at each finger in turn. She undressed indifferently, as if she were alone in her own bedroom.

Then she looked at him. She stood naked, waiting, feeling the space between them like a pressure against her stomach, knowing that it was torture for him also and that it was as they both wanted it. Then he got up, he walked to her, and when he held her, her arms rose willingly and she felt the shape of his body imprinted into the skin on the inside of her arm as it encircled him, his ribs, his armpit, his back, his shoulder blade under her fingers, her mouth on his, in a surrender more violent than her struggle had been.

Afterward, she lay in bed by his side, under his blanket, looking at his room, and she asked:

"Roark, why were you working in that quarry?"

"You know it."

"Yes. Anyone else would have taken a job in an architect's office."

"And then you'd have no desire at all to destroy me."

"You understand that?"

"Yes. Keep still. It doesn't matter now."

"Do you know that the Enright House is the most beautiful building in New York?"

"I know that you know it."

"Roark, you worked in that quarry when you had the Enright House in you, and many other Enright Houses, and you were drilling granite like a ... "

"You're going to weaken in a moment, Dominique, and then you'll regret it tomorrow."

"Yes."

"You're very lovely, Dominique."

"Don't."

"You're lovely."

"Roark, I ... I'll still want to destroy you."

"Do you think I would want you if you didn't?"

"Roark ... "

"You want to hear that again? Part of it? I want you, Dominique. I want you. I want you."

"I ... " She stopped, the word on which she stopped almost audible in her breath.

"No," he said. "Not yet. You won't say that yet. Go to sleep.

"Here? With you?"

"Here. With me. I'll fix breakfast for you in the morning. Did you know that I fix my own breakfast? You'll like seeing that. Like the work in the quarry. Then you'll go home and think about destroying me. Good night, Dominique."

8.

THE BLINDS raised over the windows of her living room, the lights of the city rising to a black horizon halfway up the glass panes, Dominique sat at her desk, correcting the last sheets of an article, when she heard the doorbell. Guests did not disturb her without warning — and she looked up, the pencil held in midair, angry and curious. She heard the steps of the maid in the hall, then the maid came in, saying: "A gentleman to see you, madam," a faint hostility in her voice explaining that the gentleman had refused to give his name.

A man with orange hair? — Dominique wanted to ask, but didn't; the pencil jerked stiffly and she said: "Have him come

Then the door opened; against the light of the hall she saw a long neck and sloping shoulders, like the silhouette of a bottle; a rich, creamy voice said, "Good evening, Dominique," and she recognized Ellsworth Toohey whom she had never asked to her house. ,

She smiled. She said: "Good evening, Ellsworth. I haven't seen you for such a long time."

"You should have expected me now, don't you think so?" He turned to the maid: "Cointreau, please, if you have it, and I'm sure you do."

The maid glanced at Dominique, wide-eyed; Dominique nodded silently, and the maid went out, closing the door.

"Busy, of course?" said Toohey, glancing at the littered desk. "Very becoming, Dominique. Gets results, too. You've been writing much better lately."

She let the pencil fall, and threw an arm over the back of her chair, half turning to him, watching him placidly. "What do you want, Ellsworth?"

He did not sit down, but stood examining the place with the unhurried curiosity of an expert.

"Not bad, Dominique. Just about as I'd expect you to have it. A little cold. You know, I wouldn't have that ice-blue chair over there. Too obvious. Fits in too well. Just what people would expect in just that spot. I'd have it carrot red. An ugly, glaring, outrageous red. Like Mr. Howard Roark's hair. That's quite en passant — merely a convenient figure of speech — nothing personal at all. Just one touch of the wrong color would make the whole room. The sort of thing that gives a place elegance. Your flower arrangements are nice. The pictures, too — not bad."

"All right, Ellsworth, all right, what is it?"

"But don't you know that I've never been here before? Somehow, you've never asked me. I don't know why." He sat down comfortably, resting an ankle on a knee, one thin leg stretched horizontally across the other, the full length of a tight, gunmetal sock exposed under the trouser cuff, and a patch of skin showing above the sock, bluish-white with a few black hairs. "But then, you've been so unsociable. The past tense, my dear, the past tense. Did you say that we haven't seen each other for a long time? That's true. You've been so busy — in such an unusual way. Visits, dinners, speakeasies and giving tea parties. Haven't you?"

"I have."

"Tea parties — I thought that was tops. This is a good room for parties — large — plenty of space to stuff people into — particularly if you're not particular whom you stuff it with — and you're not. Not now. What do you serve them? Anchovy paste and minced egg cut out like hearts?"

"Caviar and minced onion cut out like stars."

"What about the old ladies?"

"Cream cheese and chopped walnuts — in spirals."

"I'd like to have seen you taking care of things like that. It's wonderful how thoughtful you've become of old ladies. Particularly the filthy rich — with sons-in-law in real estate. Though I don't think that's as bad as going to see Knock Me Flat with Commodore Higbee who has false teeth and a nice vacant lot on the corner of Broadway and Chambers."

The maid came in with the tray. Toohey took a glass and held it delicately, inhaling, while the maid went out.

"Will you tell me why the secret service department — I won't ask who — and why the detailed reports on ray activities?" Dominique said indifferently.

"You can ask who. Anyone and everyone. Don't you suppose people are talking about Miss Dominique Francon in the role of a famous hostess — so suddenly? Miss Dominique Francon as a sort of second Kiki Holcombe, but much better — oh much! — much subtler, much abler, and then, just think, how much more beautiful. It's about time you made some use of that superlative appearance of yours that any woman would cut your throat for. It's still being wasted, of course, if one thinks of form in relation to its proper function, but at least some people are getting some good out of it. Your father, for instance. I'm sure he's delighted with this new life of yours. Little Dominique being friendly to people. Little Dominique who's become normal at last. He's wrong, of course, but it's nice to make him happy. A few others, too. Me, for instance. Though you'd never do anything just to make me happy, but then, you see, that's my lucky faculty — to extract joy from what was not intended for me at all, in a purely selfless way."

"You're not answering my question."

"But I am. You asked why the interest in your activities — and I answer: because they make me happy. Besides, look, one could be astonished — though shortsightedly — if I were gathering information on the activities of my enemies. But not to be informed about the actions of my own side — really, you know, you didn't think I'd be so unskilled a general, and whatever else you might think of me, you've never thought me unskilled."

"Your side, Ellsworth?"

"Look, Dominique, that's the trouble with your written — and spoken — style: you use too many question marks. Bad, in any case. Particularly bad when unnecessary. Let's drop the quiz technique — and just talk. Since we both understand and there aren't any questions to be asked between us. If there were — you'd have thrown me out. Instead, you gave me a very expensive liqueur."

He held the rim of the glass under his nose and inhaled with a loose kind of sensual relish, which, at a dinner table, would have been equivalent to a loud lipsmacking, vulgar there, superlatively elegant here, over a cut-crystal edge pressed to a neat little mustache.

"All right," she said. "Talk."

"That's what I've been doing. Which is considerate of me — since you're not ready to talk. Not yet, for a while. Well, let's talk — in a purely contemplative manner — about how interesting it is to see people welcoming you into their midst so eagerly, accepting you, flocking to you. Why is it, do you suppose? They do plenty of snubbing on their own, but just let someone who's snubbed them all her life suddenly break down and turn gregarious — and they all come rolling on their backs with their paws folded, for you to rub their bellies. Why? There could be two explanations, I think. The nice one would be that they are generous and wish to honor you with their friendship. Only the nice explanations are never the true ones. The other one is that they know you're degrading yourself by needing them, you're coming down off a pinnacle — every loneliness is a pinnacle — and they're delighted to drag you down through their friendship. Though, of course, none of them knows it consciously, except yourself. That's why you go through agonies, doing it, and you'd never do it for a noble cause, you'd never do it except for the end you've chosen, an end viler than the means and making the means endurable."

"You know, Ellsworth, you've said a sentence there that you'd never use in your column."

"Did I? Undoubtedly. I can say a great many things to you that I'd never use in my column. Which one?"

"Every loneliness is a pinnacle."

"That? Yes, quite right. I wouldn't. You're welcome to it — though it's not too good. Fairly crude. I'll give you better ones some day, if you wish. Sorry, however, that that's all you picked out of my little speech."

"What did you want me to pick?"

"Well, my two explanations, for instance. There's an interesting question there. What is kinder — to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance — or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable? Kindness being more important than justice, of course."

"I don't give a damn, Ellsworth."

"Not in a mood for abstract speculation? Interested only in concrete results? All right. How many commissions have you landed for Peter Keating in the last three months?"

She rose, walked to the tray which the maid had left, poured herself a drink, and said: "Four," raising the glass to her mouth. Then she turned to look at him, standing, glass in hand, and added: "And that was the famous Toohey technique. Never place your punch at the beginning of a column nor at the end. Sneak it in where it's least expected. Fill a whole column with drivel, just to get in that one important line."

He bowed courteously. "Quite. That's why I like to talk to you. It's such a waste to be subtle and vicious with people who don't even know that you're being subtle and vicious. But the drivel is never accidental, Dominique. Also, I didn't know that the technique of my column was becoming obvious. I will have to think of a new one."

"Don't bother. They love it."

"Of course. They'll love anything I write. So it's four? I missed one. I counted three."

"I can't understand why you had to come here if that's all you wanted to know. You're so fond of Peter Keating, and I'm helping him along beautifully, better than you could, so if you wanted to give me a pep talk about Petey — it wasn't necessary, was it?"

"You're wrong there twice in one sentence, Dominique. One honest error and one lie. The honest error is the assumption that I wish to help Petey Keating — and, incidentally, I can help him much better than you can, and I have and will, but that's long-range contemplation. The lie is that I came here to talk about Peter Keating — you knew what I came here to talk about when you saw me enter. And — oh my! — you'd allow someone more obnoxious than myself to barge in on you, just to talk about that subject. Though I don't know who could be more obnoxious to you than myself, at the moment."

"Peter Keating," she said.

He made a grimace, wrinkling his nose: "Oh, no. He's not big enough for that. But let's talk about Peter Keating. It's such a convenient coincidence that he happens to be your father's partner. You're merely working your head off to procure commissions for your father, like a dutiful daughter, nothing more natural. You've done wonders for the firm of Francon & Keating in these last three months. Just by smiling at a few dowagers and wearing stunning models at some of our better gatherings. Wonder what you'd accomplish if you decided to go all the way and sell your matchless body for purposes other than esthetic contemplation — in exchange for commissions for Peter Keating." He paused, she said nothing, and he added: "My compliments, Dominique, you've lived up to my best opinion of you — by not being shocked at this."

"What was that intended for, Ellsworth? Shock value or hint value?"

"Oh, it could have been a number of things — a preliminary feeler, for instance. But, as a matter of fact, it was nothing at all. Just a touch of vulgarity. Also the Toohey technique — you know, I always advise the wrong touch at the right time. I am — essentially — such an earnest, single-toned Puritan that I must allow myself another color occasionally — to relieve the monotony."

"Are you, Ellsworth? I wonder what you are — essentially. I don't know."

"I dare say nobody does," he said pleasantly. "Although really, there's no mystery about it at all. It's very simple. All things are simple when you reduce them to fundamentals. You'd be surprised if you knew how few fundamentals there are. Only two, perhaps. To explain all of us. It's the untangling, the reducing that's difficult — that's why people don't like to bother. I don't think they'd like the results, either."

"I don't mind. I know what I am. Go ahead and say it. I'm just a bitch."

"Don't fool yourself, my dear. You're much worse than a bitch. You're a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable."

"And you?"

"As a matter of fact, I know exactly what I am. That alone can explain a great deal about me. I'm giving you a helpful hint — if you care to use it. You don't, of course. You might, though — in the future."

"Why should I?"

"You need me, Dominique. You might as well understand me a little. You see, I'm not afraid of being understood. Not by you."

"I need you?"

"Oh, come on, show a little courage, too."

She sat up and waited coldly, silently. He smiled, obviously with pleasure, making no effort to hide the pleasure.

"Let's see," he said, studying the ceiling with casual attention, "those commissions you got for Peter Keating. The Cryon office building was mere nuisance value — Howard Roark never had a chance at that. The Lindsay home was better — Roark was definitely considered, I think he would have got it but for you. The Stonebrook Clubhouse also — he had a chance at that, which you ruined." He looked at her and chuckled softly. "No comments on techniques and punches, Dominique?" The smile was like cold grease floating over the fluid sounds of his voice. "You slipped up on the Norris country house — he got that last week, you know. Well, you can't be a hundred per cent successful. After all, the Enright House is a big job; it's creating a lot of talk, and quite a few people are beginning to show interest in Mr. Howard Roark. But you've done remarkably well. My congratulations. Now don't you think I'm being nice to you? Every artist needs appreciation — and there's nobody to compliment you, since nobody knows what you're doing, but Roark and me, and he won't thank you. On second thought, I don't think Roark knows what you're doing, and that spoils the fun, doesn't it?"

She asked: "How do you know what I'm doing?" — her voice tired.

"My dear, surely you haven't forgotten that it was I who gave you the idea in the first place?"

"Oh, yes," she said absently. "Yes."

"And now you know why I came here. Now you know what I meant when I spoke about my side."

"Yes," she said. "Of course."

"This is a pact, my dear. An alliance. Allies never trust each other, but that doesn't spoil their effectiveness. Our motives might be quite opposite. In fact, they are. But it doesn't matter. The result will be the same. It is not necessary to have a noble aim in common. It is necessary only to have a common enemy. We have."

"Yes."

"That's why you need me. I've been helpful once."

"Yes."

"I can hurt your Mr. Roark much better than any tea party you'll ever give."

"What for?"

"Omit the what-fors. I don't inquire into yours."

"All right."

"Then it's to be understood between us? We're allies in this?"

She looked at him, she slouched forward, attentive, her face empty. Then she said: "We're allies."

"Fine, my dear. Now listen. Stop mentioning him in your column every other day or so. I know, you take vicious cracks at him each time, but it's too much. You're keeping his name in print, and you don't want to do that. Further, you'd better invite me to those parties of yours. There are things I can do which you can't. Another tip: Mr. Gilbert Colton — you know, the California pottery Coltons — is planning a branch factory in the east. He's thinking of a good modernist. In fact, he's thinking of Mr. Roark. Don't let Roark get it. It's a huge job — with lots of publicity. Go and invent a new tea sandwich for Mrs. Colton. Do anything you wish. But don't let Roark get it."

She got up, dragged her feet to a table, her arms swinging loosely, and took a cigarette. She lighted it, turned to him, and said indifferently: "You can talk very briefly and to the point — when you want to."

"When I find it necessary."

She stood at the window, looking out over the city. She said: "You've never actually done anything against Roark. I didn't know you cared quite so much."

"Oh, my dear. Haven't I"

"You've never mentioned him in print."

"That, my dear, is what I've done against Mr. Roark. So far."

"When did you first hear of him?"

"When I saw drawings of the Heller house. You didn't think I'd miss that, did you? And you?"

"When I saw drawings of the Enright House."

"Not before?"

"Not before."

She smoked in silence; then she said, without turning to him:

"Ellsworth, if one of us tried to repeat what we said here tonight, the other would deny it and it could never be proved. So it doesn't matter if we're sincere with each other, does it? It's quite safe. Why do you hate him?"

"I never said I hated him."

She shrugged.

"As for the rest," he added, "I think you can answer that yourself."

She nodded slowly to the bright little point of her cigarette's reflection on the glass plane.

He got up, walked over to her, and stood looking at the lights of the city below them, at the angular shapes of buildings, at the dark walls made translucent by the glow of the windows, as if the walls were only a checkered veil of thin black gauze over a solid mass of radiance. And Ellsworth Toohey said softly:

"Look at it. A sublime achievement, isn't it? A heroic achievement. Think of the thousands who worked to create this and of the millions who profit by it. And it is said that but for the spirit of a dozen men, here and there down the ages, but for a dozen men — less, perhaps — none of this would have been possible. And that might be true. If so, there are — again — two possible attitudes to take. We can say that these twelve were great benefactors, that we are all fed by the overflow of the magnificent wealth of their spirit, and that we are glad to accept it in gratitude and brotherhood. Or, we can say that by the splendor of their achievement which we can neither equal nor keep, these twelve have shown us what we are, that we do not want the free gifts of their grandeur, that a cave by an oozing swamp and a fire of sticks rubbed together are preferable to skyscrapers and neon lights — if the cave and the sticks are the limit of your own creative capacities. Of the two attitudes, Dominique, which would you call the truly humanitarian one? Because, you see, I'm a humanitarian."

After a while Dominique found it easier to associate with people. She learned to accept self-torture as an endurance test, urged on by the curiosity to discover how much she could endure. She moved through formal receptions, theater parties, dinners, dances — gracious and smiling, a smile that made her face brighter and colder, like the sun on a winter day. She listened emptily to empty words uttered as if the speaker would be insulted by any sign of enthusiastic interest from his listener, as if only boredom were the only bond possible between people, the only preservative of their precarious dignity. She nodded to everything and accepted everything.

"Yes, Mr. Holt, I think Peter Keating is the man of the century — our century."

"No, Mr. Inskip, not Howard Roark, you don't want Howard Roark ... A phony? Of course, he's a phony — it takes your sensitive honesty to evaluate the integrity of a man ... Nothing much? No, Mr. Inskip, of course, Howard Roark is nothing much. It's all a matter of size and distance — and distance ... No, I don't think very much, Mr. Inskip — I'm glad you like my eyes — yes, they always look like that when I'm enjoying myself — and it made me so happy to hear you say that Howard Roark is nothing much."

"You've met Mr. Roark, Mrs. Jones? And you didn't like him? ... Oh, he's the type of man for whom one can feel no compassion? How true. Compassion is a wonderful thing. It's what one feels when one looks at a squashed caterpillar. An elevating experience. One can let oneself go and spread — you know, like taking a girdle off. You don't have to hold your stomach, your heart or your spirit up — when you feel compassion. All you have to do is look down. It's much easier. When you look up, you get a pain in the neck. Compassion is the greatest virtue. It justifies suffering. There's got to be suffering in the world, else how would we be virtuous and feel compassion? ... Oh, it has an antithesis — but such a hard, demanding one ... Admiration, Mrs. Jones, admiration. But that takes more than a girdle ... So I say that anyone for whom we can't feel sorry is a vicious person. Like Howard Roark."

Late at night, often, she came to Roark's room. She came unannounced, certain of finding him there and alone. In his room, there was no necessity to spare, lie, agree and erase herself out of being. Here she was free to resist, to see her resistance welcomed by an adversary too strong to fear a contest, strong enough to need it; she found a will granting her the recognition of her own entity, untouched and not to be touched except in clean battle, to win or to be defeated, but to be preserved in victory or defeat, not ground into the meaningless pulp of the impersonal.

When they lay in bed together it was — as it had to be, as the nature of the act demanded — an act of violence. It was surrender, made the more complete by the force of their resistance. It was an act of tension, as the great things on earth are things of tension. It was tense as electricity, the force fed on resistance, rushing through wires of metal stretched tight; it was tense as water made into power by the restraining violence of a dam. The touch of his skin against hers was not a caress, but a wave of pain, it became pain by being wanted too much, by releasing in fulfillment all the past hours of desire and denial. It was an act of clenched teeth and hatred, it was the unendurable, the agony, an act of passion — the word born to mean suffering — it was the moment made of hatred, tension, pain — the moment that broke its own elements, inverted them, triumphed, swept into a denial of all suffering, into its antithesis, into ecstasy.

She came to his room from a party, wearing an evening gown expensive and fragile like a coating of ice over her body — and she leaned against the wall, feeling the rough plaster under her skin, glancing slowly at every object around her, at the crude kitchen table loaded with sheets of paper, at the steel rulers, at the towels smudged by the black prints of five fingers, at the bare boards of the floor — and she let her glance slide down the length of her shining satin, down to the small triangle of a silver sandal, thinking of how she would be undressed here. She liked to wander about the room, to throw her gloves down among a litter of pencils, rubber erasers and rags, to put her small silver bag on a stained, discarded shirt, to snap open the catch of a diamond bracelet and drop it on a plate with the remnant of a sandwich, by an unfinished drawing.

"Roark," she said, standing behind his chair, her arms over his shoulders, her hand under his shirt, fingers spread and pressed flat against his chest, "I made Mr. Symons promise his job to Peter Keating today. Thirty-five floors, and anything he'll wish to make it cost, money no objective, just art, free art." She heard the sound of his soft chuckle, but he did not turn to look at her, only his fingers closed over her wrist and he pushed her hand farther down under his shirt, pressing it hard against his skin. Then she pulled his head back, and she bent down to cover his mouth with hers.

She came in and found a copy of the Banner spread out on his table, open at the page bearing "Your House" by Dominique Francon. Her column contained the line: "Howard Roark is the Marquis de Sade of architecture. He's in love with his buildings — and look at them." She knew that he disliked the Banner, that he put it there only for her sake, that he watched her noticing it, with the half-smile she dreaded on his face. She was angry; she wanted him to read everything she wrote, yet she would have preferred to think that it hurt him enough to make him avoid it. Later, lying across the bed, with his mouth on her breast, she looked past the orange tangle of his head, at that sheet of newspaper on the table, and he felt her trembling with pleasure.

She sat on the floor, at his feet, her head pressed to his knees, holding his hand, closing her fist in turn over each of his fingers, closing it tight and letting it slide slowly down the length of his finger, feeling the hard, small stops at the joints, and she asked softly: "Roark, you wanted to get the Colton factory? You wanted it very badly?"

"Yes, very badly," he answered, without smiling and without pain. Then she raised his hand to her lips and held it there for a long time.

She got out of bed in the darkness, and walked naked across his room to take a cigarette from the table. She bent to the light of a match, her flat stomach rounded faintly in the movement. He said: "Light one for me," and she put a cigarette between his lips; then she wandered through the dark room, smoking, while he lay in bed, propped up on his elbow, watching her.

Once she came in and found him working at his table. He said: "I've got to finish this. Sit down. Wait." He did not look at her again. She waited silently, huddled in a chair at the farthest end of the room. She watched the straight lines of his eyebrows drawn in concentration, the set of his mouth, the vein beating under the tight skin of his neck, the sharp, surgical assurance of his hand. He did not look like an artist, he looked like the quarry worker, like a wrecker demolishing walls, and like a monk. Then she did not want him to stop or glance at her, because she wanted to watch the ascetic purity of his person, the absence of all sensuality; to watch that — and to think of what she remembered.

There were nights when he came to her apartment, as she came to his, without warning. If she had guests, he said: "Get rid of them," and walked into the bedroom while she obeyed. They had a silent agreement, understood without mention, never to be seen together. Her bedroom was an exquisite place of glass and pale ice-green. He liked to come in wearing clothes stained by a day spent on the construction site. He liked to throw back the covers of her bed, then to sit talking quietly for an hour or two, not looking at the bed, not mentioning her writing or buildings or the latest commission she had obtained for Peter Keating, the simplicity of being at ease, here, like this, making the hours more sensual than the moments they delayed.

There were evenings when they sat together in her living room, at the huge window high over the city. She liked to see him at that window. He would stand, half turned to her, smoking, looking at the city below. She would move away from him and sit down on the floor in the middle of the room and watch him.

Once, when he got out of bed, she switched the light on and saw him standing there, naked; she looked at him, then she said, her voice quiet and desperate with the simple despair of complete sincerity: "Roark, everything I've done all my life is because it's the kind of a world that made you work in a quarry last summer."

"I know that."

He sat down at the foot of the bed. She moved over, she pressed her face against his thigh, curled up, her feet on the pillow, her arm hanging down, letting her palm move slowly up the length of his leg, from the ankle to the knee and back again. She said: "But, of course, if it had been up to me, last spring, when you were broke and jobless, I would have sent you precisely to that kind of a job in that particular quarry."

"I know that too. But maybe you wouldn't have. Maybe you'd have had me as washroom attendant in the clubhouse of the A.G.A."

"Yes. Possibly. Put your hand on my back, Roark. Just hold it there. Like that." She lay still, her face buried against his knees, her arm hanging down over the side of the bed, not moving, as if nothing in her were alive but the skin between her shoulder blades under his hand.

In the drawing rooms she visited, in the restaurants, in the offices of the A.G.A. people talked about the dislike of Miss Dominique Francon of the Banner for Howard Roark, that architectural freak of Roger Enright's. It gave him a sort of scandalous fame. It was said: "Roark? You know, the guy Dominique Francon can't stand the guts of."

"The Francon girl knows her architecture all right, and if she says he's no good, he must be worse than I thought he was."

"God, but these two must hate each other! Though I understand they haven't even met." She liked to hear these things. It pleased her when Athelstan Beasely wrote in his column in the A.G.A. Bulletin, discussing the architecture of medieval castles: "To understand the grim ferocity of these structures, we must remember that the wars between feudal lords were a savage business — something like the feud between Miss Dominique Francon and Mr. Howard Roark."

Austen Heller, who had been her friend, spoke to her about it. He was angrier than she had ever seen him; his face lost all the charm of his usual sarcastic poise.

"What in hell do you think you're doing, Dominique?" he snapped. "This is the greatest exhibition of journalistic hooliganism I've ever seen swilled out in public print. Why don't you leave that sort of thing to Ellsworth Toohey?"

"Ellsworth is good, isn't he?" she said.

"At least, he's had the decency to keep his unsanitary trap shut about Roark — though, of course, that too is an indecency. But what's happened to you? Do you realize who and what you're talking about? It was all right when you amused yourself by praising some horrible abortion of Grandpaw Holcombe's or panning the pants off your own father and that pretty butcher's-calendar boy that he's got himself for a partner. It didn't matter one way or another. But to bring that same intellectual manner to the appraisal of someone like Roark ... You know, I really thought you had integrity and judgment — if ever given a chance to exercise them. In fact, I thought you were behaving like a tramp only to emphasize the mediocrity of the saps whose works you had to write about. I didn't think that you were just an irresponsible bitch."

"You were wrong," she said.

Roger Enright entered her office, one morning, and said, without greeting: "Get your hat. You're coming to see it with me."

"Good morning, Roger," she said. "To see what?"

"The Enright House. As much of it as we've got put up."

"Why, certainly, Roger," she smiled, rising, "I'd love to see the Enright House."

On their way, she asked: "What's the matter, Roger? Trying to bribe me?"

He sat stiffly on the vast, gray cushions of his limousine, not looking at her. He answered: "I can understand stupid malice. I can understand ignorant malice. I can't understand deliberate rottenness. You are free, of course, to write anything you wish — afterward. But it won't be stupidity and it won't be ignorance."

"You overestimate me, Roger," she shrugged, and said nothing else for the rest of the ride.

They walked together past the wooden fence, into the jungle of naked steel and planks that was to be the Enright House. Her high heels stepped lightly over lime-spattered boards and she walked, leaning back, in careless, insolent elegance. She stopped and looked at the sky held in a frame of steel, the sky that seemed more distant than usual, thrust back by the sweeping length of beams. She looked at the steel cages of future projections, at the insolent angles, at the incredible complexity of this shape coming to life as a simple, logical whole, a naked skeleton with planes of air to form the walls, a naked skeleton on a cold winter day, with a sense of birth and promise, like a bare tree with a first touch of green.

"Oh, Roger!"

He looked at her and saw the kind of face one should expect to see in church at Easter.

"I didn't underestimate either one," he said dryly. "Neither you nor the building."

"Good morning," said a low, hard voice beside them.

She was not shocked to see Roark. She had not heard him approaching, but it would have been unnatural to think of this building without him. She felt that he simply was there, that he had been there from the moment she crossed the outside fence, that this structure was he, in a manner more personal than his body. He stood before them, his hand thrust into the pockets of a loose coat, his hair hatless in the cold.

"Miss Francon — Mr. Roark," said Enright.

"We have met once," she said, "at the Holcombes. If Mr. Roark remembers."

"Of course, Miss Francon," said Roark.

"I wanted Miss Francon to see it," said Enright.

"Shall I show you around?" Roark asked him.

"Yes, do please," she answered first.

The three of them walked together through the structure, and the workers stared curiously at Dominique. Roark explained the layout of future rooms, the system of elevators, the heating plant, the arrangement of windows — as he would have explained it to a contractor's assistant. She asked questions and he answered. "How many cubic feet of space, Mr. Roark?"

"How many tons of steel?"

"Be careful of these pipes, Miss Francon. Step this way." Enright walked along, his eyes on the ground, looking at nothing. But then he asked: "How's it going, Howard?" and Roark smiled, answering: "Two days ahead of schedule," and they stood talking about the job, like brothers, forgetting her for a moment, the clanging roar of machines around them drowning out their words.

She thought, standing here in the heart of the building, that if she had nothing of him, nothing but his body, here it was, offered to her, the rest of him, to be seen and touched, open to all; the girders and the conduits and the sweeping reaches of space were his and could not have been anyone else's in the world; his, as his face, as his soul; here was the shape he had made and the thing within him which had caused him to make it, the end and the cause together, the motive power eloquent in every line of steel, a man's self, hers for this moment, hers by grace of her seeing it and understanding.

"Are you tired, Miss Francon?" asked Roark, looking at her face.

"No," she said, "no, not at all. I have been thinking — what kind of plumbing fixtures are you going to use here, Mr. Roark?"

A few days later, in his room, sitting on the edge of his drafting table, she looked at a newspaper, at her column and the lines: "I have visited the Enright construction site. I wish that in some future air raid a bomb would blast this house out of existence. It would be a worthy ending. So much better than to see it growing old and soot-stained, degraded by the family photographs, the dirty socks, the cocktail shakers and the grapefruit rinds of its inhabitants. There is not a person in New York City who should be allowed to live in this building."

Roark came to stand beside her, his legs pressed to her knees, and he looked down at the paper, smiling.

"You have Roger completely bewildered by this," he said.

"Has he read it?"

"I was in his office this morning when he read it. At first, he called you some names I'd never heard before. Then he said, Wait a minute, and he read it again, he looked up, very puzzled, but not angry at all, and he said, if you read it one way ... but on the other hand ... "

"What did you say?"

"Nothing. You know, Dominique, I'm very grateful, but when are you going to stop handing me all that extravagant praise? Someone else might see it. And you won't like that."

"Someone else?"

"You know that I got it, from that first article of yours about the Enright House. You wanted me to get it. But don't you think someone else might understand your way of doing things?"

"Oh yes. But the effect — for you — will be worse than if they didn't. They'll like you the less for it. However, I don't know who'll even bother to understand. Unless it's ... Roark, what do you think of Ellsworth Toohey?"

"Good God, why should anyone think of Ellsworth Toohey?"

She liked the rare occasions when she met Roark at some gathering where Heller or Enright had brought him. She liked the polite, impersonal "Miss Francon" pronounced by his voice. She enjoyed the nervous concern of the hostess and her efforts not to let them come together. She knew that the people around them expected some explosion, some shocking sign of hostility which never came. She did not seek Roark out and she did not avoid him. They spoke to each other if they happened to be included in the same group, as they would have spoken to anyone else. It required no effort; it was real and right; it made everything right, even this gathering. She found a deep sense of fitness in the fact that here, among people, they should be strangers; strangers and enemies. She thought, these people can think of many things he and I are to each other — except what we are. It made the moments she remembered greater, the moments not touched by the sight of others, by the words of others, not even by their knowledge. She thought, it has no existence here, except in me and in him. She felt a sense of possession, such as she could feel nowhere else. She could never own him as she owned him in a room among strangers when she seldom looked in his direction. If she glanced at him across the room and saw him in conversation with blank, indifferent faces, she turned away, unconcerned; if the faces were hostile, she watched for a second, pleased; she was angry when she saw a smile, a sign of warmth or approval on a face turned to him. It was not jealousy; she did not care whether the face was a man's or a woman's; she resented the approval as an impertinence.

She was tortured by peculiar things: by the street where he lived, by the doorstep of his house, by the cars that turned the corner of his block. She resented the cars in particular; she wished she could make them drive on to the next street. She looked at the garbage pail by the stoop next door, and she wondered whether it had stood there when he passed by, on his way to his office this morning, whether he had looked at that crumpled cigarette package on top. Once, in the lobby of his house, she saw a man stepping out of the elevator; she was shocked for a second; she had always felt as if he were the only inhabitant of that house. When she rode up in the small, self-operating elevator, she stood leaning against the wall, her arms crossed over her breast, her hands hugging her shoulders, feeling huddled and intimate, as in a stall under a warm shower. She thought of that, while some gentleman was telling her about the latest show on Broadway, while Roark was sipping a cocktail at the other end of the room, while she heard the hostess whispering to somebody: "My Lord, I didn't think Gordon would bring Dominique — I know Austen will be furious at me, because of his friend Roark being here, you know."

Later, lying across his bed, her eyes closed, her cheeks flushed, her lips wet, losing the sense of the rules she herself had imposed, losing the sense of her words, she whispered: "Roark, there was a man talking to you out there today, and he was smiling at you, the fool, the terrible fool, last week he was looking at a pair of movie comedians and loving them, I wanted to tell that man: don't look at him, you'll have no right to want to look at anything else, don't like him, you'll have to hate the rest of the world, it's like that, you damn fool, one or the other, not together, not with the same eyes, don't look at him, don't like him, don't approve, that's what I wanted to tell him, not you and the rest of it, I can't bear to see that, I can't stand it, anything to take you away from it, from their world, from all of them, anything, Roark ... " She did not hear herself saying it, she did not see him smiling, she did not recognize the full understanding in his face, she saw only his face close over hers, and she had nothing to hide from him, nothing to keep unstated, everything was granted, answered, found.

Peter Keating was bewildered. Dominique's sudden devotion to his career seemed dazzling, flattering, enormously profitable; everybody told him so; but there were moments when he did not feel dazzled or flattered; he felt uneasy.

He tried to avoid Guy Francon. "How did you do it, Peter? How did you do it?" Francon would ask. "She must be crazy about you! Who'd every think that Dominique of all people would ... ? And who'd think she could? She'd have made me a millionaire if she'd done her stuff five years ago. But then, of course, a father is not the same inspiration as a ... " He caught an ominous look on Keating's face and changed the end of his sentence to: "as her man, shall we say?"

"Listen, Guy," Keating began, and stopped, sighing, and muttered: "Please, Guy, we mustn't ... "

"I know, I know, I know. We mustn't be premature. But hell, Peter, entre nous, isn't it all as public as an engagement? More so. And louder." Then the smile vanished, and Francon's face looked earnest, peaceful, frankly aged, in one of his rare flashes of genuine dignity. "And I'm glad, Peter," he said simply. "That's what I wanted to happen. I guess I always did love Dominique, after all. It makes me happy. I know I'll be leaving her in good hands. Her and everything else eventually ... "

"Look, old man, will you forgive me? I'm so terribly rushed — had two hours sleep last night, the Colton factory, you know, Jesus, what a job! — thanks to Dominique — it's a killer, but wait till you see it! Wait till you see the check, too!"

"Isn't she wonderful? Will you tell me, why is she doing it? I've asked her and I can't make head or tail of what she says, she gives me the craziest gibberish, you know how she talks."

"Oh well, we should worry, so long as she's doing it!"

He could not tell Francon that he had no answer; he couldn't admit that he had not seen Dominique alone for months; that she refused to see him.

He remembered his last private conversation with her — in the cab on their way from Toohey's meeting. He remembered the indifferent calm of her insults to him — the utter contempt of insults delivered without anger. He could have expected anything after that — except to see her turn into his champion, his press agent, almost — his pimp. That's what's wrong, he thought, that I can think of words like that when I think about it.

He had seen her often since she started on her unrequested campaign; he had been invited to her parties — and introduced to his future clients; he had never been allowed a moment alone with her. He had tried to thank her and to question her. But he could not force a conversation she did not want continued, with a curious mob of guests pressing all around them. So he went on smiling blandly — her hand resting casually on the black sleeve of his dinner jacket, her thigh against his as she stood beside him, her pose possessive and intimate, made flagrantly intimate by her air of not noticing it, while she told an admiring circle what she thought of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. He heard envious comments from all his friends. He was, he thought bitterly, the only man in New York City who did not think that Dominique Francon was in love with him.

But he knew the dangerous instability of her whims, and this was too valuable a whim to disturb. He stayed away from her and sent her flowers; he rode along and tried not to think of it; the little edge remained — a thin edge of uneasiness.

One day, he met her by chance in a restaurant. He saw her lunching alone and grasped the opportunity. He walked straight to her table, determined to act like an old friend who remembered nothing but her incredible benevolence. After many bright comments on his luck, he asked: "Dominique, why have you been refusing to see me?"

"What should I have wanted to see you for?"

"But good Lord Almighty! ... " That came out involuntarily, with too sharp a sound of long-suppressed anger, and he corrected it hastily, smiling: "Well, don't you think you owed me a chance to thank you?"

"You've thanked me. Many times."

"Yes, but didn't you think we really had to meet alone? Didn't you think that I'd be a little ... bewildered?"

"I haven't thought of it. Yes, I suppose you could be."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"What is it all about?"

"About ... fifty thousand dollars by now, I think."

"You're being nasty."

"Want me to stop?"

"Oh no! That is, not ... "

"Not the commissions. Fine. I won't stop them. You see? What was there for us to talk about? I'm doing things for you and you're glad to have me do them — so we're in perfect agreement."

"You do say the funniest things! In perfect agreement. That's

sort of a redundancy and an understatement at the same time,

isn't it? What else could we be under the circumstances? You

wouldn't expect me to object to what you're doing, would you?"

"No. I wouldn't."

"But agreeing is not the word for what I feel. I'm so terribly grateful to you that I'm simply dizzy — I was bowled over — don't let me get silly now — I know you don't like that — but I'm so grateful I don't know what to do with myself."

"Fine, Peter. Now you've thanked me."

"You see, I've never flattered myself by thinking that you thought very much of my work or cared or took any notice. And then you ... That's what makes me so happy and ... Dominique," he asked, and his voice jerked a little, because the question was like a nook pulling at a line, long and hidden, and he knew that this was the core of his uneasiness, "do you really think that I'm a great architect?"

She smiled slowly. She said: "Peter, if people heard you asking that, they'd laugh. Particularly, asking that of me."

"Yes, I know, but ... but do you really mean them, all those things you say about me?"

"They work."

"Yes, but is that why you picked me? Because you think I'm good?"

"You sell like hot cakes. Isn't that proof?"

"Yes ... No ... I mean ... in a different way ... I mean ... Dominique, I'd like to hear you say once, just once, that I ... "

"Listen, Peter, I'll have to run along in a moment, but before I go I must tell you that you'll probably hear from Mrs. Lonsdale tomorrow or the next day. Now remember that she's a prohibitionist, loves dogs, hates women who smoke, and believes in reincarnation. She wants her house to be better than Mrs. Purdee's — Holcombe did Purdee's — so if you tell her that Mrs. Purdee's house looks ostentatious and that true simplicity costs much more money, you'll get along fine. You might discuss petit point too. That's her hobby."

He went away, thinking happily about Mrs. Lonsdale's house, and he forgot his question. Later, he remembered it resentfully, and shrugged, and told himself that the best part of Dominique's help was her desire not to see him.

As a compensation, he found pleasure in attending the meetings of Toohey's Council of American Builders. He did not know why he should think of it as compensation, but he did and it was comforting. He listened attentively when Gordon L. Prescott made a speech on the meaning of architecture.

"And thus the intrinsic significance of our craft lies in the philosophical fact that we deal in nothing. We create emptiness through which certain physical bodies are to move — we shall designate them for convenience as humans. By emptiness I mean what is commonly known as rooms. Thus it is only the crass layman who thinks that we put up stone walls. We do nothing of the kind. We put up emptiness, as I have proved. This leads us to a corollary of astronomical importance: to the unconditional acceptance of the premise that 'absence' is superior to 'presence.' That is, to the acceptance of non-acceptance. I shall state this in simpler terms — for the sake of clarity: 'nothing' is superior to 'something.' Thus it is clear that the architect is more than a bricklayer — since the fact of bricks is a secondary illusion anyway. The architect is a metaphysical priest dealing in basic essentials, who has the courage to face the primal conception of reality as nonreality — since there is nothing and he creates nothingness. If this sounds like a contradiction, it is not a proof of bad logic, but of a higher logic, the dialectics of all life and art. Should you wish to make the inevitable deductions from this basic conception, you may come to conclusions of vast sociological importance. You may see that a beautiful woman is inferior to a non-beautiful one, that the literate is inferior to the illiterate, that the rich is inferior to the poor, and the able to the incompetent. The architect is the concrete illustration of a cosmic paradox. Let us be modest in the vast pride of this realization. Everything else is twaddle."

One could not worry about one's value or greatness when listening to this. It made self-respect unnecessary.

Keating listened in thick contentment. He glanced at the others. There was an attentive silence in the audience; they all liked it as he liked it. He saw a boy chewing gum, a man cleaning his fingernails with the corner of a match folder, a youth stretched out loutishly. That, too, pleased Keating; it was as if they said: We are glad to listen to the sublime, but it's not necessary to be too damn reverent about the sublime.

The Council of American Builders met once a month and engaged in no tangible activity, beyond listening to speeches and sipping an inferior brand of root beer. Its membership did not grow fast either in quantity or in quality. There were no concrete results achieved.

The meetings of the Council were held in a huge, empty room over a garage on the West Side. A long, narrow, unventilated stairway led to a door bearing the Council's name; there were folding chairs inside, a table for the chairman, and a wastebasket. The A.G.A. considered the Council of American Builders a silly joke. "Why do you want to waste time on those cranks for?"

Francon asked Keating in the rose-lit satin-stuffed rooms of the A.G.A., wrinkling his nose with fastidious amusement. "Damned if I know," Keating answered gaily. "I like them." Ellsworth Toohey attended every meeting of the Council, but did not speak. He sat in a corner and listened.

One night Keating and Toohey walked home together after the meeting, down the dark, shabby streets of the West Side, and stopped for a cup of coffee at a seedy drugstore. "Why not a drugstore?" Toohey laughed when Keating reminded him of the distinguished restaurants made famous by Toohey's patronage. "At least, no one will recognize us here and bother us."

He sent a jet of smoke from his Egyptian cigarette at a faded Coca-Cola sign over their booth, he ordered a sandwich, he nibbled daintily a slice of pickle which was not flyspecked but looked it, and he talked to Keating. He talked at random. What he said did not matter, at first; it was his voice, the matchless voice of Ellsworth Toohey. Keating felt as if he were standing in the middle of a vast plain, under the stars, held and owned, in assurance, in security.

"Kindness, Peter," said the voice softly, "kindness. That is the first commandment, perhaps the only one. That is why I had to pan that new play, in my column yesterday. That play lacked essential kindness. We must be kind, Peter, to everybody around us. We must accept and forgive — there is so much to be forgiven in each one of us. If you learn to love everything, the humblest, the least, the meanest, then the meanest in you will be loved. Then we'll find the sense of universal equality, the great peace of brotherhood, a new world, Peter, a beautiful new world ... "

9.

ELLSWORTH MONKTON TOOHEY was seven years old when he turned the hose upon Johnny Stokes, as Johnny was passing by the Toohey lawn, dressed in his best Sunday suit. Johnny had waited for that suit a year and a half, his mother being very poor. Ellsworth did not sneak or hide, but committed his act openly, with systematic deliberation: he walked to the tap, turned it on, stood in the middle of the lawn and directed the hose at Johnny, his aim faultless — with Johnny's mother just a few steps behind him down the street, with his own mother and father and the visiting minister in full view on the Toohey porch. Johnny Stokes was a bright kid with dimples and golden curls; people always turned to look at Johnny Stokes. Nobody had ever turned to look at Ellsworth Toohey.

The shock and amazement of the grownups present were such that nobody rushed to stop Ellsworth for a long moment. He stood, bracing his thin little body against the violence of the nozzle jerking in his hands, never allowing it to leave its objective until he felt satisfied; then he let it drop, the water hissing through the grass, and made two steps toward the porch, and stopped, waiting, his head high, delivering himself for punishment. The punishment would have come from Johnny if Mrs. Stokes had not seized her boy and held him. Ellsworth did not turn to the Stokeses behind him, but said, slowly, distinctly, looking at his mother and the minister: "Johnny is a dirty bully. He beats up all the boys in school." This was true.

The question of punishment became an ethical problem. It was difficult to punish Ellsworth under any circumstances, because of his fragile body and delicate health; besides, it seemed wrong to chastise a boy who had sacrificed himself to avenge injustice, and done it bravely, in the open, ignoring his own physical weakness; somehow, he looked like a martyr. Ellsworth did not say so; he said nothing further; but his mother said it. The minister was inclined to agree with her. Ellsworth was sent to his room without supper. He did not complain. He remained there meekly — and refused the food his mother sneaked up to him, late at night, disobeying her husband. Mr. Toohey insisted on paying Mrs. Stokes for Johnny's suit. Mrs. Toohey let him do it, sullenly; she did not like Mrs. Stokes.

Ellsworth's father managed the Boston branch of a national chain of shoe stores. He earned a modest, comfortable salary and owned a modest, comfortable home in an undistinguished suburb of Boston. The secret sorrow of his life was that he did not head a business of his own. But he was a quiet, conscientious, unimaginative man, and an early marriage had ended all his ambition. Ellsworth's mother was a thin, restless woman who adopted and discarded five religions in nine years. She had delicate features, the kind that made her look beautiful for a few years of her life, at the one period of full flower, never before and never afterward. Ellsworth was her idol. His sister Helen, five years older, was a good-natured, unremarkable girl, not beautiful but pretty and healthy; she presented no problem. Ellsworth, however, had been born puny in health. His mother adored him from the moment the doctor pronounced him unfit to survive; it made her grow in spiritual stature — to know the extent of her own magnanimity in her love for so uninspiring an object; the bluer and uglier baby Ellsworth looked, the more passionate grew her love for him. She was almost disappointed when he survived without becoming an actual cripple. She took little interest in Helen; there was no martyrdom in loving Helen. The girl was so obviously more deserving of love that it seemed just to deny it to her.

Mr. Toohey, for reasons which he could not explain, was not too fond of his son. Ellsworth, however, was the ruler of the household, by a tacit, voluntary submission of both parents, though his father could never understand the cause of his own share in that submission.

In the evenings, under the lamp of the family sitting room, Mrs. Toohey would begin, in a tense, challenging voice, angry and defeated in advance: "Horace, I want a bicycle. A bicycle for Ellsworth. All the boys his age have them, Willie Lovett just got a new one the other day, Horace. Horace, I want a bicycle for Ellsworth."

"Not right now, Mary," Mr. Toohey would answer wearily. "Maybe next summer ... Just now we can't afford ... "

Mrs. Toohey would argue, her voice rising in jerks toward a shriek.

"Mother, what for?" said Ellsworth, his voice soft, rich and clear, lower than the voices of his parents, yet cutting across them, commanding, strangely persuasive. "There's many things we need more than a bicycle. What do you care about Willie Lovett? I don't like Willie. Willie's a dumbbell. Willie can afford it, because his pa's got his own dry-goods store. His pa's a showoff. I don't want a bicycle."

Every word of this was true, and Ellsworth did not want a bicycle. But Mr. Toohey looked at him strangely, wondering what had made him say that. He saw his son's eyes looking at him blankly from behind the small glasses; the eyes were not ostentatiously sweet, not reproachful, not malicious; just blank. Mr. Toohey felt that he should be grateful for his son's understanding — and wished to hell the boy had not mentioned that part about the private store.

Ellsworth did not get the bicycle. But he got a polite attention in the house, a respectful solicitude — tender and guilty, from his mother, uneasy and suspicious from his father. Mr. Toohey would do anything rather than be forced into a conversation with Ellsworth — feeling, at the same time, foolish and angry at himself for his fear.

"Horace, I want a new suit. A new suit for Ellsworth. I saw one in a window today and I've ... "

"Mother, I've got four suits. What do I need another one for? I don't want to look silly like Pat Noonan who changes them every day. That's because his pa's got his own ice-cream parlor. Pat's stuck up like a girl about his clothes. I don't want to be a sissy."

Ellsworth, thought Mrs. Toohey at times, happy and frightened, is going to be a saint; he doesn't care about material things at all; not one bit. This was true. Ellsworth did not care about material things.

He was a thin, pale boy with a bad stomach, and his mother had to watch his diet, as well as his tendency to frequent colds in the head. His sonorous voice was astonishing in his puny frame. He sang in the choir, where he had no rivals. At school he was a model pupil. He always knew his lessons, had the neatest copybooks, the cleanest fingernails, loved Sunday school and preferred reading to athletic games, in which he had no chance. He was not too good at mathematics — which he disliked — but excellent at history. English, civics and penmanship; later, at psychology and sociology.

He studied conscientiously and hard. He was not like Johnny Stokes, who never listened in class, seldom opened a book at home, yet knew everything almost before the teacher had explained it. Learning came to Johnny automatically, as did all things: his able little fists, his healthy body, his startling good looks, his overexuberant vitality. But Johnny did the shocking and the unexpected: Ellsworth did the expected, better than anyone had ever seen it done. When they came to compositions, Johnny would stun the class by some brilliant display of rebellion. Given the theme of "School Days — The Golden Age," Johnny came through with a masterly essay on how he hated school and why. Ellsworth delivered a prose poem on the glory of school days, which was reprinted in a local newspaper.

Besides, Ellsworth had Johnny beaten hollow when it came to names and dates; Ellsworth's memory was like a spread of liquid cement: it held anything that fell upon it. Johnny was a shooting geyser; Ellsworth was a sponge.

The children called him "Elsie Toohey." They usually let him have his way, and avoided him when possible, but not openly; they could not figure him out. He was helpful and dependable when they needed assistance with their lessons; he had a sharp wit and could ruin any child by the apt nickname he coined, the kind that hurt; he drew devastating cartoons on fences; he had all the earmarks of a sissy, but somehow he could not be classified as one; he had too much self-assurance and quiet, disturbingly wise contempt for everybody. He was afraid of nothing.

He would march right up to the strongest boys, in the middle of the street, and state, not yell, in a clear voice that carried for blocks, state without anger — no one had ever seen Ellsworth Toohey angry — "Johnny Stokes's got a patch on his ass. Johnny Stokes lives in a rented flat. Willie Lovett is a dunce. Pat Noonan is a fish eater." Johnny never gave him a beating, and neither did the other boys, because Ellsworth wore glasses.

He could not take part in ball games, and was the only child who boasted about it, instead of feeling frustrated or ashamed like the other boys with substandard bodies. He considered athletics vulgar and said so; the brain, he said, was mightier than the brawn; he meant it.

He had no close personal friends. He was considered impartial and incorruptible. There were two incidents in his childhood of which his mother was very proud.

It happened that the wealthy, popular Willie Lovett gave a birthday party on the same day as Drippy Munn, son of a widowed seamstress, a whining boy whose nose was always running. Nobody accepted Drippy's invitation, except the children who were never invited anywhere. Of those asked for both occasions, Ellsworth Toohey was the only one who snubbed Willie Lovett and went to Drippy Munn's party, a miserable affair from which he expected and received no pleasure. Willie Lovett's enemies howled and taunted Willie for months afterward — about being passed up in favor of Drippy Munn.

It happened that Pat Noonan offered Ellsworth a bag of jelly beans in exchange for a surreptitious peek at his test paper. Ellsworth took the jelly beans and allowed Pat to copy his test. A week later, Ellsworth marched up to the teacher, laid the jelly beans, untouched, upon her desk and confessed his crime, without naming the other culprit. All her efforts to extract that name could not budge him; Ellsworth remained silent; he explained only that the guilty boy was one of the best students, and he could not sacrifice the boy's record to the demands of his own conscience. He was the only one punished — kept after school for two hours. Then the teacher had to drop the matter and let the test marks remain as they were. But it threw suspicion on the grades of Johnny Stokes, Pat Noonan, and all the best pupils of the class, except Ellsworth Toohey.

Ellsworth was eleven years old when his mother died. Aunt Adeline, his father's maiden sister, came to live with them and run the Toohey household. Aunt Adeline was a tall, capable woman to whom the word "horse" clung in conjunction with the words "sense" and "face." The secret sorrow of her life was that she had never inspired romance. Helen became her immediate favorite. She considered Ellsworth an imp out of hell. But Ellsworth never wavered in his manner of grave courtesy toward Aunt Adeline. He leaped to pick up her handkerchief, to move her chair, when they had company, particularly masculine company. He sent her beautiful Valentines on the appropriate day — with paper lace, rosebuds and love poems. He sang "Sweet Adeline" at the top of his town crier's voice. "You're a maggot, Elsie," she told him once. "You feed on sores."

"Then I'll never starve," he answered. After a while they reached a state of armed neutrality. Ellsworth was left to grow up as he pleased.

In high school Ellsworth became a local celebrity — the star orator. For years the school did not refer to a promising boy as a good speaker, but as "a Toohey." He won every contest. Afterward, members of the audience spoke about "that beautiful boy"; they did not remember the sorry little figure with the sunken chest, inadequate legs and glasses; they remembered the voice. He won every debate. He could prove anything. Once, after beating Willie Lovett with the affirmative of "The Pen Is Mightier than the Sword," he challenged Willie to reverse their positions, took the negative and won again.,

Until the age of sixteen Ellsworth felt himself drawn to the career of a minister. He thought a great deal about religion. He talked about God and the spirit. He read extensively on the subject. He read more books on the history of the church than on the substance of faith. He brought his audience to tears in one of his greatest oratorical triumphs with the theme of "The meek shall inherit the earth."

At this period he began to acquire friends. He liked to speak of faith and he found those who liked to listen. Only, he discovered that the bright, the strong, the able boys of his class felt no need of listening, felt no need of him at all. But the suffering and ill-endowed came to him. Drippy Munn began to follow him about with the silent devotion of a dog. Billy Wilson lost his mother, and came wandering to the Toohey house in the evenings, to sit with Ellsworth on the porch, listening, shivering once in a while, saying nothing, his eyes wide, dry and pleading. Skinny Dix got infantile paralysis — and would lie in bed, watching the street corner beyond the window, waiting for Ellsworth. Rusty Hazelton failed to pass in his grades, and sat for many hours, crying, with Ellsworth's cold, steady hand on his shoulder. It was never clear whether they all discovered Ellsworth or Ellsworth discovered them. It seemed to work more like a law of nature: as nature allows no vacuum, so pain and Ellsworth Toohey drew each other. His rich, beautiful voice said to them: "It's good to suffer. Don't complain. Bear, bow, accept — and be grateful that God has made you suffer. For this makes you better than the people who are laughing and happy. If you don't understand this, don't try to understand. Everything bad comes from the mind, because the mind asks too many questions. It is blessed to believe, not to understand. So if you didn't get passing grades, be glad of it. It means that you are better than the smart boys who think too much and too easily."

People said it was touching, the way Ellsworth's friends clung to him. After they had taken him for a while, they could not do without him. It was like a drug habit.

Ellsworth was fifteen, when he astonished the Bible-class teacher by an odd question. The teacher had been elaborating upon the text: "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Ellsworth asked: "Then in order to be truly wealthy, a man should collect souls?" The teacher was about to ask him what the hell did he mean, but controlled himself and asked what did he mean. Ellsworth would not elucidate.

At the age of sixteen, Ellsworth lost interest in religion. He discovered socialism. His transition shocked Aunt Adeline. "In the first place, it is blasphemous and drivel," she said. "In the second place, it doesn't make sense. I'm surprised at you, Elsie. 'The poor in spirit' — that was fine, but just 'the poor' — that doesn't sound respectable at all. Besides it's not like you. You're not cut out to make big trouble — only little trouble. Something's crazy somewhere, Elsie. It just don't fit. It's not like you at all."

"In the first place, my dear aunt," he answered, "don't call me Elsie. In the second place, you're wrong."

The change seemed good for Ellsworth. He did not become an aggressive zealot. He became gentler, quieter, milder. He became more attentively considerate of people. It was as if something had taken the nervous edges off his personality and given him new confidence. Those around him began to like him. Aunt Adeline stopped worrying. Nothing actual seemed to come of his preoccupation with revolutionary theories. He joined no political party. He read a great deal and he attended a few dubious meetings, where he spoke once or twice, not too well, but mostly sat in a corner, listening, watching, thinking.

Ellsworth went to Harvard. His mother had willed her life insurance for that specific purpose. At Harvard his scholastic record was superlative. He majored in history. Aunt Adeline had expected to see him go in for economics and sociology; she half feared that he would end up as a social worker. He didn't. He became absorbed in literature and the fine arts. It baffled her a little; it was a new trait in him; he had never shown any particular tendency in that direction. "You're not the arty kind, Elsie," she stated. "It don't fit."

"You're wrong, auntie," he said.

Ellsworth's relations with his fellow students were the most unusual of his achievements at Harvard. He made himself accepted. Among the proud young descendants of proud old names, he did not hide the fact of his humble background; he exaggerated it. He did not tell them that his father was the manager of a shoe store; "he said that his father was a shoe cobbler. He said it without defiance, bitterness or proletarian arrogance; he said it as if it were a joke on him and — if one looked closely into his smile — on them. He acted like a snob; not a flagrant snob, but a natural, innocent one who tries very hard not to be snobbish. He was polite, not in the manner of one seeking favor, but in the manner of one granting it. His attitude was contagious. People did not question the reasons of his superiority; they took it for granted that such reasons existed. It became amusing, at first, to accept "Monk" Toohey; then it became distinctive and progressive. If this was a victory Ellsworth did not seem conscious of it as such; he did not seem to care. He moved among all these unformed youths, with the assurance of a man who has a plan, a long-range plan set in every detail, and who can spare nothing but amusement for the small incidentals on his way. His smile had a secret, closed quality, the smile of a shopkeeper counting profits — even though nothing in particular seemed to be happening.

He did not talk about God and the nobility of suffering. He talked about the masses. He proved to a rapt audience, at bull sessions lasting till dawn, that religion bred selfishness; because, he stated, religion overemphasized the importance of the individual spirit; religion preached nothing but a single concern — the salvation of one's own soul.

"To achieve virtue in the absolute sense," said Ellsworth Toohey, "a man must be willing to take the foulest crimes upon his soul — for the sake of his brothers. To mortify the flesh is nothing. To mortify the soul is the only act of virtue. So you think you love the broad mass of mankind? You know nothing of love. You give two bucks to a strike fund and you think you've done your duty? You poor fools! No gift is worth a damn, unless it's the most precious thing you've got. Give your soul. To a lie? Yes, if others believe it. To deceit? Yes, if others need it. To treachery, knavery, crime? Yes! To whatever it is that seems lowest and vilest in your eyes. Only when you can feel contempt for your own priceless little ego, only then can you achieve the true, broad peace of selflessness, the merging of your spirit with the vast collective spirit of mankind. There is no room for the love of others within the tight, crowded miser's hole of a private ego. Be empty in order to be filled. 'He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.' The opium peddlers of the church had something there, but they didn't know what they had. Self-abnegation? Yes, my friends, by all means. But one doesn't abnegate by keeping one's self pure and proud of its own purity. The sacrifice that includes the destruction of one's soul — ah, but what am I talking about? This is only for heroes to grasp and to achieve."

He did not have much success among the poor boys working their way through college. He acquired a sizable following among the young heirs, the second and third generation millionaires. He offered them an achievement of which they felt capable.

He graduated with high honors. When he came to New York, he was preceded by a small, private fame; a few trickles of rumor had seeped down from Harvard about an unusual person named Ellsworth Toohey; a few people, among the extreme intellectuals and the extremely wealthy, heard these rumors and promptly forgot what they heard, but remembered the name; it remained in their minds with a vague connotation of such things as brilliance, courage, idealism.

People began to ooze toward Ellsworth Toohey; the right kind of people, those who soon found him to be a spiritual necessity. The other kind did not come; there seemed to be an instinct about it. When someone commented on the loyalty of Toohey's following — he had no title, program or organization, but somehow his circle was called a following from the first — an envious rival remarked: "Toohey draws the sticky kind. You know the two things that stick best: mud and glue." Toohey overheard it and shrugged, smiling, and said: "Oh, come, come, come, there are many more: adhesive plaster, leeches, taffy, wet socks, rubber girdles, chewing gum and tapioca pudding." Moving away, he added over his shoulder, without smiling: "And cement."

He took his Master's degree from a New York university and wrote a thesis on "Collective Patterns in the City Architecture of the XlVth Century." He earned his living in a busy, varied, scattered way: no one could keep track of all his activities. He held the post of vocational adviser at the university, he reviewed books, plays, art exhibitions, he wrote articles, gave a few lectures to small, obscure audiences. Certain tendencies were apparent in his work. When reviewing books, he leaned toward novels about the soil rather than the city, about the average rather than the gifted, about the sick rather than the healthy; there was a special glow in his writing when he referred to stories about "little people"; "human" was his favorite adjective; he preferred character study to action, and description to character study; he preferred novels without a plot and, above all, novels without a hero.

He was considered outstanding as a vocational adviser. His tiny office at the university became an informal confessional where students brought all their problems, academic as well as personal. He was willing to discuss — with the same gentle, earnest concentration — the choice of classes, or love affairs, or — most particularly — the selection of a future career.

When consulted on love affairs, Toohey counseled surrender, if it concerned a romance with a charming little pushover, good for a few drunken parties — "let us be modern"; and renunciation, if it concerned a deep, emotional passion — "let us be grownup." When a boy came to confess a feeling of shame after some unsavory sexual experience, Toohey told him to snap out of it: "It was damn good for you. There are two things we must get rid of early in life: a feeling of personal superiority and an exaggerated reverence for the sexual act."

People noticed that Ellsworth Toohey seldom let a boy pursue the career he had chosen. "No, I wouldn't go in for law if I were you. You're much too tense and passionate about it. A hysterical devotion to one's career does not make for happiness or success. It is wiser to select a profession about which you can be calm, sane and matter-of-fact. Yes, even if you hate it. It makes for down-to-earthness." ... "No, I wouldn't advise you to continue with your music. The fact that it comes to you so easily is a sure sign that your talent is only a superficial one. That's just the trouble — that you love it. Don't you think that sounds like a childish reason? Give it up. Yes, even if it hurts like hell." ... "No, I'm sorry, I would like so much to say that I approve, but I don't. When you thought of architecture, it was a purely selfish choice, wasn't it? Have you considered anything but your own egotistical satisfaction? Yet a man's career concerns all society. The question of where you could be most useful to your fellow men comes first. It's not what you can get out of society, it's what you can give. And where opportunities for service are concerned, there's no endeavor comparable to that of a surgeon. Think it over."

After leaving college some of his protégés did quite well, others failed. Only one committed suicide. It was said that Ellsworth Toohey had exercised a beneficent influence upon them — for they never forgot him: they came to consult him on many things, years later, they wrote him, they clung to him. They were like machines without a self-starter, that had to be cranked up by an outside hand. He was never too busy to give them his full attention.

His life was crowded, public and impersonal as a city square. The friend of humanity had no single private friend. People came to him; he came close to no one. He accepted all. His affection was golden, smooth and even, like a great expanse of sand; there was no wind of discrimination to raise dunes; the sands lay still and the sun stood high.

Out of his meager income he donated money to many organizations. He was never known to have loaned a dollar to an individual. He never asked his rich friends to assist a person in need; but he obtained from them large sums and endowments for charitable institutions: for settlement houses, recreation centers, homes for fallen girls, schools for defective children. He served on the boards of all these institutions — without salary. A great many philanthropic undertakings and radical publications, run by all sorts of people, had a single connecting link among them, one common denominator: the name of Ellsworth M. Toohey on their stationery. He was a sort of one-man holding company of altruism.

Women played no part in his life. Sex had never interested him. His furtive, infrequent urges drew him to the young, slim, full-bosomed, brainless girls — the giggling little waitresses, the lisping manicurists, the less efficient stenographers, the kind who wore pink or orchid dresses and little hats on the back of their heads with gobs of blond curls in front. He was indifferent to women of intellect.

He contended that the family was a bourgeois institution; but he made no issue of it and did not crusade for free love. The subject of sex bored him. There was, he felt, too much fuss made over the damn thing; it was of no importance; there were too many weightier problems in the world.

The years passed, with each busy day of his life like a small, neat coin dropped patiently into a gigantic slot machine, without a glance at the combination of symbols, without return. Gradually, one of his many activities began to stand out among the others: he became known as an eminent critic of architecture. He wrote about buildings for three successive magazines that limped on noisily for a few years and failed, one after the other: New Voices, New Pathways, New Horizons. The fourth, New Frontiers, survived. Ellsworth Toohey was the only thing salvaged from the successive wrecks. Architectural criticism seemed to be a neglected field of endeavor; few people bothered to write about buildings, fewer to read. Toohey acquired a reputation and an unofficial monopoly. The better magazines began calling upon him whenever they needed anything connected with architecture.

In the year 1921 a small change occurred in Toohey's private life; his niece Catherine Halsey, the daughter of his sister Helen, came to live with him. His father had long since died, and Aunt Adeline had vanished into the obscure poverty of some small town; at the death of Catherine's parents there was no one else to take care of her. Toohey had not intended to keep her in his own home. But when she stepped off the train in New York, her plain little face looked beautiful for a moment, as if the future were opening before her and its glow were already upon her forehead, as if she were eager and proud and ready to meet it. It was one of those rare moments when the humblest person knows suddenly what it means to feel as the center of the universe, and is made beautiful by the knowledge, and the world — in the eyes of witnesses — looks like a better place for having such a center. Ellsworth Toohey saw this — and decided that Catherine would remain with him.

In the year 1925 came Sermons in Stone — and fame.

Ellsworth Toohey became a fashion. Intellectual hostesses fought over him. Some people disliked him and laughed at him. But there was little satisfaction in laughing at Ellsworth Toohey, because he was always first to make the most outrageous remarks about himself. Once, at a party, a smug, boorish businessman listened to Toohey's earnest social theories for a while and said complacently: "Well, I wouldn't know much about all that intellectual stuff. I play the stock market."

"I," said Toohey, "play the stock market of the spirit. And I sell short."

The most important consequence of Sermons in Stone was Toohey's contract to write a daily column for Gail Wynand's New York Banner.

The contract came as a surprise to the followers of both sides involved, and, at first, it made everybody angry. Toohey had referred to Wynand frequently and not respectfully; the Wynand papers had called Toohey every name fit to print. But the Wynand papers had no policy, save that of reflecting the greatest prejudices of the greatest number, and this made for an erratic direction, but a recognizable direction, nevertheless: toward the inconsistent, the irresponsible, the trite and the maudlin. The Wynand papers stood against Privilege and for the Common Man, but in a respectable manner that could shock nobody; they exposed monopolies, when they wished; they supported strikes, when they wished, and vice versa. They denounced Wall Street and they denounced socialism and they hollered for clean movies, all with the same gusto. They were strident and blatant — and, in essence, lifelessly mild. Ellsworth Toohey was a phenomenon much too extreme to fit behind the front page of the Banner.

But the staff of the Banner was as unfastidious as its policy. It included everybody who could please the public or any large section thereof. It was said: "Gail Wynand is not a pig. He'll eat anything." Ellsworth Toohey was a great success and the public was suddenly interested in architecture; the Banner had no authority on architecture; the Banner would get Ellsworth Toohey. It was a simple syllogism.

Thus "One Small Voice" came into existence.

The Banner explained its appearance by announcing: "On Monday the Banner will present to you a new friend — ELLSWORTH M. TOOHEY — whose scintillating book Sermons in Stone you have all read and loved. The name of Mr. Toohey stands for the great profession of architecture. He will help you to understand everything you want to know about the wonders of modern building. Watch for 'ONE SMALL VOICE' on Monday. To appear exclusively in the Banner in New York City." The rest of what Mr. Toohey stood for was ignored.

Ellsworth Toohey made no announcement or explanation to anyone. He disregarded the friends who cried that he had sold himself. He simply went to work. He devoted "One Small Voice" to architecture — once a month. The rest of the time it was the voice of Ellsworth Toohey saying what he wished said — to syndicated millions.

Toohey was the only Wynand employee who had a contract permitting him to write anything he pleased. He had insisted upon it. It was considered a great victory, by everybody except Ellsworth Toohey. He realized that it could mean one of two things: either Wynand had surrendered respectfully to the prestige of his name — or Wynand considered him too contemptible to be worth restraining.

"One Small Voice" never seemed to say anything dangerously revolutionary, and seldom anything political. It merely preached sentiments with which most people felt in agreement: unselfishness, brotherhood, equality. "I'd rather be kind than right."

"Mercy is superior to justice, the shallow-hearted to the contrary notwithstanding."

"Speaking anatomically — and perhaps otherwise — the heart is our most valuable organ. The brain is a superstition."

"In spiritual matters there is a simple, infallible test: everything that proceeds from the ego is evil; everything that proceeds from love for others is good."

"Service is the only badge of nobility. I see nothing offensive in the conception of fertilizer as the highest symbol of man's destiny: it is fertilizer that produces wheat and roses."

"The worst folk song is superior to the best symphony."

"A man braver than his brothers insults them by implication. Let us aspire to no virtue which cannot be shared."

"I have yet to see a genius or a hero who, if stuck with a burning match, would feel less pain than his undistinguished average brother."

"Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a disease."

"We are all brothers under the skin — and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it."

In the offices of the Banner Ellsworth Toohey was treated respectfully and left alone. It was whispered that Gail Wynand did not like him — because Wynand was always polite to him. Alvah Scarret unbent to the point of cordiality, but kept a wary distance. There was a silent, watchful equilibrium between Toohey and Scarret: they understood each other.

Toohey made no attempt to approach Wynand in any way. Toohey seemed indifferent to all the men who counted on the Banner. He concentrated on the others, instead.

He organized a club of Wynand employees. It was not a labor union; it was just a club. It met once a month in the library of the Banner. It did not concern itself with wages, hours or working conditions; it had no concrete program at all. People got acquainted, talked, and listened to speeches. Ellsworth Toohey made most of the speeches. He spoke about new horizons and the press as the voice of the masses. Gail Wynand appeared at a meeting once, entering unexpectedly in the middle of a session. Toohey smiled and invited him to join the club, declaring that he was eligible. Wynand did not join. He sat listening for half an hour, yawned, got up, and left before the meeting was over.

Alvah Scarret appreciated the fact that Toohey did not try to reach into his field, into the important matters of policy. As a kind of return courtesy, Scarret let Toohey recommend new employees, when there was a vacancy to fill, particularly if the position was not an important one; as a rule, Scarret did not care, while Toohey always cared, even when it was only the post of copy boy. Toohey's selections got the jobs. Most of them were young, brash, competent, shifty-eyed and shook hands limply. They had other things in common, but these were not so apparent.

There were several monthly meetings which Toohey attended regularly; the meetings of: the Council of American Builders, the Council of American Writers, the Council of American Artists. He had organized them all.

Lois Cook was chairman of the Council of American Writers. It met in the drawing room of her home on the Bowery. She was the only famous member. The rest included a woman who never used capitals in her books, and a man who never used commas; a youth who had written a thousand-page novel without a single letter o, and another who wrote poems that neither rhymed nor scanned; a man with a beard who was sophisticated and proved it by using every unprintable four-letter word in every ten pages of his manuscript; a woman who imitated Lois Cook, except that her style was less clear; when asked for explanations she stated that this was the way life sounded to her, when broken by the prism of her subconscious — "You know what a prism does to a ray of light, don't you?" she said. There was also a fierce young man known simply as Ike the Genius, though nobody knew just what he had done, except that he talked about loving all of life. The Council signed a declaration which stated that writers were servants of the proletariat — but the statement did not sound as simple as that; it was more involved and much longer. The declaration was sent to every newspaper in the country. It was never published anywhere, except on page 32 of New Frontiers. The Council of American Artists had, as chairman, a cadaverous youth who painted what he saw in his nightly dreams. There was a boy who used no canvas, but did something with bird cages and metronomes, and another who discovered a new technique of painting: he blackened a sheet of paper and then painted with a rubber eraser. There was a stout middle-aged lady who drew subconsciously, claiming that she never looked at her hand and had no idea of what the hand was doing; her hand, she said, was guided by the spirit of the departed lover whom she had never met on earth. Here they did not talk so much about the proletariat, but merely rebelled against the tyranny of reality and of the objective.

A few friends pointed out to Ellsworth Toohey that he seemed guilty of inconsistency; he was so deeply opposed to individualism, they said, and here were all these writers and artists of his, and every one of them was a rabid individualist. "Do you really think so?" said Toohey, smiling blandly.

Nobody took these Councils seriously. People talked about them, because they thought it made good conversation; it was such a huge joke, they said, certainly there was no harm in any of it. "Do you really think so?" said Toohey.

Ellsworth Toohey was now forty-one years old. He lived in a distinguished apartment that seemed modest when compared to the size of the income he could have commanded if he wished. He liked to apply the adjective "conservative" to himself in one respect only: in his conservative good taste for clothes. No one had ever seen him lose his temper. His manner was immutable; it was the same in a drawing room, at a labor meeting, on a lecture platform, in the bathroom or during sexual intercourse: cool, self-possessed, amused, faintly patronizing.

People admired his sense of humor. He was, they said, a man who could laugh at himself. "I'm a dangerous person. Somebody ought to warn you against me," he said to people, in the tone of uttering the most preposterous thing in the world.

Of all the many titles bestowed upon him, he preferred one: Ellsworth Toohey, the Humanitarian.

10.

THE ENRIGHT HOUSE was opened in June of 1929.

There was no formal ceremony. But Roger Enright wanted to mark the moment for his own satisfaction. He invited a few people he liked and he unlocked the great glass entrance door, throwing it open to the sun-filled air. Some press photographers had arrived, because the story concerned Roger Enright and because Roger Enright did not want to have them there. He ignored them. He stood in the middle of the street, looking at the building, then he walked through the lobby, stopping short without reason and resuming his pacing. He said nothing. He frowned fiercely, as if he were about to scream with rage. His friends knew that Roger Enright was happy.

The building stood on the shore of the East River, a structure rapt as raised arms. The rock crystal forms mounted in such eloquent steps that the building did not seem stationary, but moving upward in a continuous flow — until one realized that it was only the movement of one's glance and that one's glance was forced to move in that particular rhythm. The walls of pale gray limestone looked silver against the sky, with the clean, dulled luster of metal, but a metal that had become a warm, living substance, carved by the most cutting of all instruments — a purposeful human will. It made the house alive in a strange, personal way of its own, so that in the minds of spectators five words ran dimly, without object or clear connection: " ... in His image and likeness ... "

A young photographer from the Banner noticed Howard Roark standing alone across the street, at the parapet of the river. He was leaning back, his hands closed over the parapet, hatless, looking up at the building. It was an accidental, unconscious moment. The young photographer glanced at Roark's face — and thought of something that had puzzled him for a long time: he had always wondered why the sensations one felt in dreams were so much more intense than anything one could experience in waking reality — why the horror was so total and the ecstasy so complete — and what was that extra quality which could never be recaptured afterward; the quality of what he felt when he walked down a path through tangled green leaves in a dream, in an air full of expectation, of causeless, utter rapture — and when he awakened he could not explain it, it had been just a path through some woods. He thought of that because he saw that extra quality for the first time in waking existence, he saw it in Roark's face lifted to the building. The photographer was a young boy, new to his job; he did not know much about it; but he loved his work; he had been an amateur photographer since childhood. So he snapped a picture of Roark in that one moment.

Later the Art Editor of the Banner saw the picture and barked: "What the hell's that?"

"Howard Roark," said the photographer. "Who's Howard Roark?"

"The architect."

"Who the hell wants a picture of the architect?"

"Well, I only thought ... "

"Besides, it's crazy. What's the matter with the man?" So the picture was thrown into the morgue.

The Enright House rented promptly. The tenants who moved in were people who wanted to live in sane comfort and cared about nothing else. They did not discuss the value of the building; they merely liked living there. They were the sort who lead useful, active private lives in public silence.

But others talked a great deal of the Enright House, for about three weeks. They said that it was preposterous, exhibitionist and phony. They said: "My dear, imagine inviting Mrs. Moreland if you lived in a place like that! And her home is in such good taste!" A few were beginning to appear who said: "You know, I rather like modern architecture, there are some mighty interesting things being done that way nowadays, there's quite a school of it in Germany that's rather remarkable — but this is not like it at all. This is a freak."

Ellsworth Toohey never mentioned the Enright House in his column. A reader of the Banner wrote to him: "Dear Mr. Toohey: What do you think of this place they call the Enright House? I have a friend who is an interior decorator and he talks a lot about it and he says it's lousy. Architecture and such various arts being my hobby, I don't know what to think. Will you tell us in your column?" Ellsworth Toohey answered in a private letter: "Dear friend: There are so many important buildings and great events going on in the world today that I cannot devote my column to trivialities."

But people came to Roark — the few he wanted. That winter, he had received a commission to build the Norris house, a modest country home. In May he signed another contract — for his first office building, a fifty-story skyscraper in the center of Manhattan. Anthony Cord, the owner, had come from nowhere and made a fortune in Wall Street within a few brilliant, violent years. He wanted a building of his own and he went to Roark. Roark's office had grown to four rooms. His staff loved him. They did not realize it and would have been shocked to apply such a term as love to their cold, unapproachable, inhuman boss. These were the words they used to describe Roark, these were the words they had been trained to use by all the standards and conceptions of their past; only, working with him, they knew that he was none of these things, but they could not explain, neither what he was nor what they felt for him.

He did not smile at his employees, he did not take them out for drinks, he never inquired about their families, their love lives or their church attendance. He responded only to the essence of a man: to his creative capacity. In this office one had to be competent. There were no alternatives, no mitigating considerations. But if a man worked well, he needed nothing else to win his employer's benevolence: it was granted, not as a gift, but as a debt. It was granted, not as affection, but as recognition. It bred an immense feeling of self-respect within every man in that office.

"Oh, but that's not human," said somebody when one of Roark's draftsmen tried to explain this at home, "such a cold, intellectual approach!" One boy, a younger sort of Peter Keating, tried to introduce the human in preference to the intellectual in Roark's office; he did not last two weeks. Roark made mistakes in choosing his employees occasionally, not often; those whom he kept for a month became his friends for life. They did not call themselves friends; they did not praise him to outsiders; they did not talk about him. They knew only, in a dim way, that it was not loyalty to him, but to the best within themselves.

Dominique remained in the city all summer. She remembered, with bitter pleasure, her custom to travel; it made her angry to think that she could not go, could not want to go. She enjoyed the anger; it drove her to his room. On the nights which she did not spend with him she walked through the streets of the city. She walked to the Enright House or to the Fargo Store, and stood looking at the building for a long time. She drove alone out of town — to see the Heller house, the Sanborn house, the Gowan Service Station. She never spoke to him about that.

Once, she took the Staten Island ferry at two o'clock in the morning; she rode to the island, standing alone at the rail of an empty deck. She watched the city moving away from her. In the vast emptiness of sky and ocean, the city was only a small, jagged solid. It seemed condensed, pressed tight together, not a place of streets and separate buildings, but a single sculptured form. A form of irregular steps that rose and dropped without ordered continuity, long ascensions and sudden drops, like the graph of a stubborn struggle. But it went on mounting — toward a few points, toward the triumphant masts of skyscrapers raised out of the struggle.

The boat went past the Statue of Liberty — a figure in a green light, with an arm raised like the skyscrapers behind it.

She stood at the rail, while the city diminished, and she felt the motion of growing distance as a growing tightness within her, the pull of a living cord that could not be stretched too far. She stood in quiet excitement when the boat sailed back and she saw the city growing again to meet her. She stretched her arms wide. The city expanded, to her elbows, to her wrists, beyond her fingertips. Then the skyscrapers rose over her head, and she was back.

She came ashore. She knew where she had to go, and wanted to get there fast, but felt she must get there herself, like this, on her own feet. So she walked half the length of Manhattan, through long, empty, echoing streets. It was four-thirty when she knocked at his door. He had been asleep. She shook her head. "No," she said. "Go back to sleep. I just want to be here." She did not touch him. She took off her hat and shoes, huddled into an armchair, and fell asleep, her arm hanging over the chair's side, her head on her arm. In the morning he asked no questions. They fixed breakfast together, then he hurried away to his office. Before leaving, he took her in his arms and kissed her. He walked out, and she stood for a few moments, then left. They had not exchanged twenty words.

There were week ends when they left the city together and drove in her car to some obscure point on the coast. They stretched out in the sun, on the sand of a deserted beach, they swam in the ocean. She liked to watch his body in the water. She would remain behind and stand, the waves hitting her knees, and watch him cutting a straight line through the breakers. She liked to lie with him at the edge of the water; she would lie on her stomach, a few feet away from him, facing the shore, her toes stretched to the waves; she would not touch him, but she would feel the waves coming up behind them, breaking against their bodies, and she would see the backwash running in mingled streams off her body and his.

They spent the nights at some country inn, taking a single room. They never spoke of the things left behind them in the city. But it was the unstated that gave meaning to the relaxed simplicity of these hours; their eyes laughed silently at the preposterous contract whenever they looked at each other.

She tried to demonstrate her power over him. She stayed away from his house; she waited for him to come to her. He spoiled it by coming too soon; by refusing her the satisfaction of knowing that he waited and struggled against his desire; by surrendering at once. She would say: "Kiss my hand, Roark." He would kneel and kiss her ankle. He defeated her by admitting her power; she could not have the gratification of enforcing it. He would lie at her feet, he would say: "Of course I need you. I go insane when I see you. You can do almost anything you wish with me. Is that what you want to hear? Almost, Dominique. And the things you couldn't make me do — you could put me through hell if you demanded them and I had to refuse you, as I would. Through utter hell, Dominique. Does that please you? Why do you want to know whether you own me? It's so simple. Of course you do. All of me that can be owned. You'll never demand anything else. But you want to know whether you could make me suffer. You could. What of it?" The words did not sound like surrender, because they were not torn out of him, but admitted simply and willingly. She felt no thrill of conquest; she felt herself owned more than ever, by a man who could say these things, know of them to be true, and still remain controlled and controlling — as she wanted him to remain.

Late in June a man named Kent Lansing came to see Roark. He was forty years old, he was dressed like a fashion plate and looked like a prize fighter, though he was not burly, muscular or tough: he was thin and angular. He merely made one think of a boxer and of other things that did not fit his appearance: of a battering ram, of a tank, of a submarine torpedo. He was a member of a corporation formed for the purpose of erecting a luxurious hotel on Central Park South. There were many wealthy men involved and the corporation was ruled by a numerous board; they had purchased their site; they had not decided on an architect. But Kent Lansing had made up his mind that it would be Roark.

"I won't try to tell you how much I'd like to do it," Roark said to him at the end of their first interview. "But there's not a chance of my getting it. I can get along with people — when they're alone. I can do nothing with them in groups. No board has ever hired me — and I don't think one ever will."

Kent Lansing smiled. "Have you ever known a board to do. anything?"

"What do you mean?"

"Just that: have you ever known a board to do anything at all?"

"Well, they seem to exist and function."

"Do they? You know, there was a time when everyone thought it self-evident that the earth was flat. It would be entertaining to speculate upon the nature and causes of humanity's illusions. I'll write a book about it some day. It won't be popular. I'll have a chapter on boards of directors. You see, they don't exist."

"I'd like to believe you, but what's the gag?"

"No, you wouldn't like to believe me. The causes of illusions are not pretty to discover. They're either vicious or tragic. This one is both. Mainly vicious. And it's not a gag. But we won't go into that now. All I mean is that a board of directors is one or two ambitious men — and a lot of ballast. I mean that groups of men are vacuums. Great big empty nothings. They say we can't visualize a total nothing. Hell, sit at any committee meeting. The point is only who chooses to fill that nothing. It's a tough battle. The toughest. It's simple enough to fight any enemy, so long as he's there to be fought. But when he isn't ... Don't look at me like that, as if I were crazy. You ought to know. You've fought a vacuum all your life."

"I'm looking at you like that because I like you."

"Of course you like me. As I knew I'd like you. Men are brothers, you know, and they have a great instinct for brotherhood — except in boards, unions, corporations and other chain gangs. But I talk too much. That's why I'm a good salesman. However, I have nothing to sell you. You know. So we'll just say that you're going to build the Aquitania — that's the name of our hotel — and we'll let it go at that."

If the violence of the battles which people never hear about could be measured in material statistics, the battle of Kent Lansing against the board of directors of the Aquitania Corporation would have been listed among the greatest carnages of history. But the things he fought were not solid enough to leave anything as substantial as corpses on the battlefield.

He had to fight phenomena such as: "Listen, Palmer, Lansing's talking about somebody named Roark, how're you going to vote, do the big boys approve of him or not?"

"I'm not going to decide till I know who's voted for or against."

"Lansing says ... but on the other hand, Thorpe tells me ... "Talbot's putting up a swank hotel on Fifth up in the sixties — and he's got Francon & Keating." "Harper swears by this young fellow — Gordon Prescott." "Listen, Betsy says we're crazy." "I don't like Roark's face — he doesn't look co-operative." "I know, I feel it, Roark's the kind that don't fit in. He's not a regular fellow."

"What's a regular fellow?"

"Aw hell, you know very well what I mean: regular."

"Thompson says that Mrs. Pritchett says that she knows for certain because Mr. Macy told her that if ... "

"Well, boys, I don't give a damn what anybody says, I make up my own mind, and I'm here to tell you that I think this Roark is lousy. I don't like the Enright House."

"Why?"

"I don't know why. I just don't like it, and that's that. Haven't I got a right to an opinion of my own?"

The battle lasted for weeks. Everybody had his say, except Roark. Lansing told him: "It's all right. Lay off. Don't do anything. Let me do the talking. There's nothing you can do. When facing society, the man most concerned, the man who is to do the most and contribute the most, has the least say. It's taken for granted that he has no voice and the reasons he could offer are rejected in advance as prejudiced — since no speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgment on a man than on an idea. Though how in hell one passes judgment on a man without considering the content of his brain is more than I'll ever understand. However, that's how it's done. You see, reasons require scales to weigh them. And scales are not made of cotton. And cotton is what the human spirit is made of — you know, the stuff that keeps no shape and offers no resistance and can be twisted forward and backward and into a pretzel. You could tell them why they should hire you so very much better than I could. But they won't listen to you and they'll listen to me. Because I'm the middleman. The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line — it's a middleman. And the more middlemen, the shorter. Such is the psychology of a pretzel."

"Why are you fighting for me like that?" Roark asked.

"Why are you a good architect? Because you have certain standards of what is good, and they're your own, and you stand by them. I want a good hotel, and I have certain standards of what is good, and they're my own, and you're the one who can give me what I want. And when I fight for you, I'm doing — on my side of it — just what you're doing when you design a building. Do you think integrity is the monopoly of the artist? And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor's pocket? No, it's not as easy as that. If that were all, I'd say ninety-five percent of humanity were honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they aren't. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think. Thinking is something one doesn't borrow or pawn. And yet, if I were asked to choose a symbol for humanity as we know it, I wouldn't choose a cross nor an eagle nor a lion and unicorn. I'd choose three gilded balls."

And as Roark looked at him, he added: "Don't worry. They're all against me. But I have one advantage: they don't know what they want. I do."

At the end of July, Roark signed a contract to build the Aquitania.

Ellsworth Toohey sat in his office, looking at a newspaper spread out on his desk, at the item announcing the Aquitania contract. He smoked, holding a cigarette propped in the corner of his mouth, supported by two straight fingers; one finger tapped against the cigarette, slowly, rhythmically, for a long time.

He heard the sound of his door thrown open, and he glanced up to see Dominique standing there, leaning against the doorjamb, her arms crossed on her chest. Her face looked interested, nothing more, but it was alarming to see an expression of actual interest on her face.

"My dear," he said, rising, "this is the first time you've taken the trouble to enter my office — in the four years that we've worked in the same building. This is really an occasion."

She said nothing, but smiled gently, which was still more alarming. He added, his voice pleasant: "My little speech, of course, was the equivalent of a question. Or don't we understand each other any longer?"

"I suppose we don't — if you find it necessary to ask what brought me here. But you know it, Ellsworth, you know it; there it is on your desk." She walked to the desk and flipped a comer of the newspaper. She laughed. "Do you wish you had it hidden somewhere? Of course you didn't expect me to come. Not that it makes any difference. But I just like to see you being obvious for once. Right on your desk, like that. Open at the real-estate page, too."

"You sound as if that little piece of news had made you happy."

"It did, Ellsworth. It does."

"I thought you had worked hard to prevent that contract."

"I had."

"If you think this is an act you're putting on right now, Dominique, you're fooling yourself. This isn't an act."

"No, Ellsworth. This isn't."

"You're happy that Roark got it?"

"I'm so happy. I could sleep with this Kent Lansing, whoever he is, if I ever met him and if he asked me."

"Then the pact is off?"

"By no means. I shall try to stop any job that comes his way. I shall continue trying. It's not going to be so easy as it was, though. The Enright House, the Cord Building — and this. Not so easy for me — and for you. He's beating you, Ellsworth. Ellsworth, what if we were wrong about the world, you and I?"

"You've always been, my dear. Do forgive me. I should have known better than to be astonished. It would make you happy, of course, that he got it. I don't even mind admitting that it doesn't make me happy at all. There, you see? Now your visit to my office has been a complete success. So we shall just write the Aquitania off as a major defeat, forget all about it and continue as we were."

"Certainly, Ellsworth. Just as we were. I'm cinching a beautiful new hospital for Peter Keating at a dinner party tonight."

Ellsworth Toohey went home and spent the evening thinking about Hopton Stoddard.

Hopton Stoddard was a little man worth twenty million dollars. Three inheritances had contributed to that sum, and seventy-two years of a busy life devoted to the purpose of making money. Hopton Stoddard had a genius for investment; he invested in everything — houses of ill fame, Broadway spectacles on the grand scale, preferably of a religious nature, factories, farm mortgages and contraceptives. He was small and bent. His face was not disfigured; people merely thought it was, because it had a single expression: he smiled. His little mouth was shaped like a v in eternal good cheer; his eyebrows were tiny v's inverted over round, blue eyes; his hair, rich, white and waved, looked like a wig, but was real.

Toohey had known Hopton Stoddard for many years and exercised a strong influence upon him. Hopton Stoddard had never married, had no relatives and no friends; he distrusted people, believing that they were always after his money. But he felt a tremendous respect for Ellsworth Toohey, because Toohey represented the exact opposite of his own life; Toohey had no concern whatever for worldly wealth; by the mere fact of this contrast, he considered Toohey the personification of virtue; what this estimate implied in regard to his own life never quite occurred to him. He was not easy in his mind about his life, and the uneasiness grew with the years, with the certainty of an approaching end. He found relief in religion — in the form of a bribe. He experimented with several different creeds, attended services, donated large sums and switched to another faith. As the years passed, the tempo of his quest accelerated; it had the tone of panic.

Toohey's indifference to religion was the only flaw that disturbed him in the person of his friend and mentor. But everything Toohey preached seemed in line with God's law: charity, sacrifice, help to the poor. Hopton Stoddard felt safe whenever he followed Toohey's advice. He donated handsomely to the institutions recommended by Toohey, without much prompting. In matters of the spirit he regarded Toohey upon earth somewhat as he expected to regard God in heaven.

But this summer Toohey met defeat with Hopton Stoddard for the first time.

Hopton Stoddard decided to realize a dream which he had been planning slyly and cautiously, like all his other investments, for several years: he decided to build a temple. It was not to be the temple of any particular creed, but an interdenominational, non-sectarian monument to religion, a cathedral of faith, open to all. Hopton Stoddard wanted to play safe.

He felt crushed when Ellsworth Toohey advised him against the project. Toohey wanted a building to house a new home for subnormal children; he had an organization set up, a distinguished committee of sponsors, an endowment for operating expenses — but no building and no funds to erect one. If Hopton Stoddard wished a worthy memorial to his name, a grand climax of his generosity, to what nobler purpose could he dedicate his money than to the Hopton Stoddard Home for Subnormal Children, Toohey pointed out to him emphatically; to the poor little blighted ones for whom nobody cared. But Hopton Stoddard could not be aroused to any enthusiasm for a Home nor for any mundane institution. It had to be "The Hopton Stoddard Temple of the Human Spirit."

He could offer no arguments against Toohey's brilliant array; he could say nothing except: "No, Ellsworth, no, it's not right, not right." The matter was left unsettled. Hopton Stoddard would not budge, but Toohey's disapproval made him uncomfortable and he postponed his decision from day to day. He knew only that he would have to decide by the end of summer, because in the fall he was to depart on a long journey, a world tour of the holy shrines of all faiths, from Lourdes to Jerusalem to Mecca to Benares.

A few days after the announcement of the Aquitania contract Toohey came to see Hopton Stoddard, in the evening, in the privacy of Stoddard's vast, overstuffed apartment on Riverside Drive.

"Hopton," he said cheerfully, "I was wrong. You were right about that temple."

"No!" said Hopton Stoddard, aghast.

"Yes," said Toohey, "you were right. Nothing else would be quite fitting. You must build a temple. A Temple of the Human Spirit."

Hopton Stoddard swallowed, and his blue eyes became moist. He felt that he must have progressed far upon the path of righteousness if he had been able to teach a point of virtue to his teacher. After that, nothing else mattered; he sat, like a meek, wrinkled baby, listening to Ellsworth Toohey, nodding, agreeing to everything.

"It's an ambitious undertaking, Hopton, and if you do it, you must do it right. It's a little presumptuous, you know — offering a present to God — and unless you do it in the best way possible, it will be offensive, not reverent."

"Yes, of course. It must be right. It must be right. It must be the best. You'll help me, won't you, Ellsworth? You know all about buildings and art and everything — it must be right."

"I'll be glad to help you, if you really want me to."

"If I want you to! What do you mean — if I want ... ! Goodness gracious, what would I do without you? I don't know anything about ... about anything like that. And it must be right."

"If you want it right, will you do exactly as I say?"

"Yes. Yes. Yes, of course."

"First of all, the architect. That's very important."

"Yes, indeed."

"You don't want one of those satin-lined commercial boys with the dollar sign all over them. You want a man who believes in his work as — as you believe in God."

"That's right. That's absolutely right."

"You must take the one I name."

"Certainly. Who's that?"

"Howard Roark."

"Huh?" Hopton Stoddard looked blank. "Who's he?"

"He's the man who's going to build the Temple of the Human Spirit."

"Is he any good?"

Ellsworth Toohey turned and looked straight into his eyes.

"By my immortal soul, Hopton," he said slowly, "he's the best there is."

"Oh! ... "

"But he's difficult to get. He doesn't work except on certain conditions. You must observe them scrupulously. You must give him complete freedom. Tell him what you want and how much you want to spend, and leave the rest up to him. Let him design it and build it as he wishes. He won't work otherwise. Just tell him frankly that you know nothing about architecture and that you chose him because you felt he was the only one who could be trusted to do it right without advice or interference."

"Okay, if you vouch for him."

"I vouch for him."

"That's fine. And I don't care how much it costs me."

"But you must be careful about approaching him. I think he will refuse to do it, at first. He will tell you that he doesn't believe in God."

"What!"

"Don't believe him. He's a profoundly religious man — in his own way. You can see that in his buildings."

"Oh."

"But he doesn't belong to any established church. So you won't appear partial. You won't offend anyone."

"That's good."

"Now, when you deal in matters of faith, you must be the first one to have faith. Is that right?"

"That's right."

"Don't wait to see his drawings. They will take some time — and you mustn't delay your trip. Just hire him — don't sign a contract, it's not necessary — make arrangements for your bank to take care of the financial end and let him do the rest. You don't have to pay him his fee until you return. In a year or so, when you come back after seeing all those great temples, you'll have a better one of your own, waiting here for you."

"That's just what I wanted."

"But you must think of the proper unveiling to the public, the proper dedication, the right publicity."

"Of course ... That is, publicity?"

"Certainly. Do you know of any great event that's not accompanied by a good publicity campaign? One that isn't, can't be much. If you skimp on that, it will be downright disrespectful."

"That's true."

"Now if you want the proper publicity, you must plan it carefully, well in advance. What you want, when you unveil it, is one grand fanfare, like an opera overture, like a blast on Gabriel's horn."

"That's beautiful, the way you put it."

"Well, to do that you mustn't allow a lot of newspaper punks to dissipate your effect by dribbling out premature stories. Don't release the drawings of the temple. Keep them secret. Tell Roark that you want them kept secret. He won't object to that. Have the contractor put up a solid fence all around the site while it's being built. No one's to know what it's like until you come back and preside at the unveiling in person. Then — pictures in every damn paper in the country!"

"Ellsworth!"

"I beg your pardon."

"The idea's right. That's how we put over The Legend of the Virgin, ten years ago that was, with a cast of ninety-seven."

"Yes. But in the meantime, keep the public interested. Get yourself a good press agent and tell him how you want it handled. I'll give you the name of an excellent one. See to it that there's something about the mysterious Stoddard Temple in the papers every other week or so. Keep 'em guessing. Keep 'em waiting. They'll be good and ready when the time comes."

"Right."

"But, above all, don't let Roark know that I recommended him. Don't breathe a word to anyone about my having anything to do with it. Not to a soul. Swear it."

"But why?"

"Because I have too many friends who are architects, and it's such an important commission, and I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings."

"Yes. That's true."

"Swear it."

"Oh, Ellsworth!"

"Swear it. By the salvation of your soul."

"I swear it. By ... that."

"All right. Now you've never dealt with architects, and he's an unusual kind of architect, and you don't want to muff it. So I'll tell you exactly what you're to say to him."

On the following day Toohey walked into Dominique's office. He stood at her desk, smiled and said, his voice unsmiling:

"Do you remember Hopton Stoddard and that temple of all faith that he's been talking about for six years?"

"Vaguely."

"He's going to build it."

"Is he?"

"He's giving the job to Howard Roark."

"Not really!"

"Really."

"Well, of all the incredible ... Not Hopton!"

"Hopton."

"Oh, all right. I'll go to work on him."

"No. You lay off. I told him to give it to Roark."

She sat still, exactly as the words caught her, the amusement gone from her face. He added:

"I wanted you to know that I did it, so there won't be any tactical contradictions. No one else knows it or is to know it. I trust you to remember that."

She asked, her lips moving tightly: "What are you after?"

He smiled. He said:

"I'm going to make him famous."

Roark sat in Hopton Stoddard's office and listened, stupefied. Hopton Stoddard spoke slowly; it sounded earnest and impressive, but was due to the fact that he had memorized his speeches almost verbatim. His baby eyes looked at Roark with an ingratiating plea. For once, Roark almost forgot architecture and placed the human element first; he wanted to get up and get out of the office; he could not stand the man. But the words he heard held him; the words did not match the man's face or voice.

"So you see, Mr. Roark, though it is to be a religious edifice, it is also more than that. You notice that we call it the Temple of the Human Spirit. We want to capture — in stone, as others capture in music — not some narrow creed, but the essence of all religion. And what is the essence of religion? The great aspiration of the human spirit toward the highest, the noblest, the best. The human spirit as the creator and the conqueror of the ideal. The great life-giving force of the universe. The heroic human spirit. That is your assignment, Mr. Roark."

Roark rubbed the back of his hand against his eyes, helplessly. It was not possible. It simply was not possible. That could not be what the man wanted; not that man. It seemed horrible to hear him say that.

"Mr. Stoddard, I'm afraid you've made a mistake," he said, his voice slow and tired. "I don't think I'm the man you want. I don't think it would be right for me to undertake it. I don't believe in God."

He was astonished to see Hopton Stoddard's expression of delight and triumph. Hopton Stoddard glowed in appreciation — in appreciation of the clairvoyant wisdom of Ellsworth Toohey who was always right. He drew himself up with new confidence, and he said firmly, for the first time in the tone of an old man addressing a youth, wise and gently patronizing:

"That doesn't matter. You're a profoundly religious man, Mr. Roark — in your own way. I can see that in your buildings."

He wondered why Roark stared at him like that, without moving, for such a long time.

"That's true," said Roark. It was almost a whisper.

That he should learn something about himself, about his buildings, from this man who had seen it and known it before he knew it, that this man should say it with that air of tolerant confidence implying full understanding — removed Roark's doubts. He told himself that he did not really understand people; that an impression could be deceptive; that Hopton Stoddard would be far on another continent away; that nothing mattered in the face of such an assignment; that nothing could matter when a human voice — even Hopton Stoddard's — was going on, saying:

"I wish to call it God. You may choose any other name. But what I want in that building is your spirit. Your spirit, Mr. Roark. Give me the best of that — and you will have done your job, as I shall have done mine. Do not worry about the meaning I wish conveyed. Let it be your spirit in the shape of a building — and it will have that meaning, whether you know it or not."

And so Roark agreed to build the Stoddard Temple of the Human Spirit.

11.

IN DECEMBER the Cosmo-Slotnick Building was opened with great ceremony. There were celebrities, flower horseshoes, newsreel cameras, revolving searchlights and three hours of speeches, all alike.

I should be happy, Peter Keating told himself — and wasn't. He watched from a window the solid spread of faces filling Broadway from curb to curb. He tried to talk himself into joy. He felt nothing. He had to admit that he was bored. But he smiled and shook hands and let himself be photographed. The Cosmo-Slotnick Building rose ponderously over the street, like a big white bromide.

After the ceremonies Ellsworth Toohey took Keating away to the retreat of a pale-orchid booth in a quiet, expensive restaurant. Many brilliant parties were being given in honor of the opening, but Keating grasped Toohey's offer and declined all the other invitations. Toohey watched him as he seized his drink and slumped in his seat.

"Wasn't it grand?" said Toohey. 'That, Peter, is the climax of what you can expect from life." He lifted his glass delicately. "Here's to the hope that you shall have many triumphs such as this. Such as tonight."

"Thanks," said Keating, and reached for his glass hastily, without looking, and lifted it, to find it empty.

"Don't you feel proud, Peter?"

"Yes. Yes, of course."

"That's good. That's how I like to see you. You looked extremely handsome tonight. You'll be splendid in those newsreels."

A flicker of interest snapped in Keating's eyes. "Well, I sure hope so."

"It's too bad you're not married, Peter. A wife would have been most decorative tonight. Goes well with the public. With the movie audiences, too."

"Katie doesn't photograph well."

"Oh, that's right, you're engaged to Katie. So stupid of me. I keep forgetting it. No, Katie doesn't photograph well at all. Also, for the life of me, I can't imagine Katie being very effective at a social function. There are a great many nice adjectives one could use about Katie, but 'poised' and 'distinguished' are not among them. You must forgive me, Peter. I let my imagination run away with me. Dealing with art as much as I do, I'm inclined to see things purely from the viewpoint of artistic fitness. And looking at you tonight, I couldn't help thinking of the woman who would have made such a perfect picture by your side."

"Who?"

"Oh, don't pay attention to me. It's only an esthetic fancy. Life is never as perfect as that. People have too much to envy you for. You couldn't add that to your other achievements."

"Who?"

"Drop it, Peter. You can't get her. Nobody can get her. You're good, but you're not good enough for that."

"Who?"

"Dominique Francon, of course."

Keating sat up straight and Toohey saw wariness in his eyes, rebellion, actual hostility. Toohey held his glance calmly. It was Keating who gave in; he slumped again and he said, pleading:

"Oh, God, Ellsworth, I don't love her."

"I never thought you did. But I do keep forgetting the exaggerated importance which the average man attaches to love — sexual love."

"I'm not an average man," said Keating wearily; it was an automatic protest — without fire.

"Sit up, Peter. You don't look like a hero, slumped that way."

Keating jerked himself up — anxious and angry. He said:

"I've always felt that you wanted me to marry Dominique. Why? What's it to you?"

"You've answered your own question, Peter. What could it possibly be to me? But we were speaking of love. Sexual love, Peter, is a profoundly selfish emotion. And selfish emotions are not the ones that lead to happiness. Are they? Take tonight for instance. That was an evening to swell an egotist's heart. Were you happy, Peter? Don't bother, my dear, no answer is required. The point I wish to make is only that one must mistrust one's most personal impulses. What one desires is actually of so little importance! One can't expect to find happiness until one realizes this completely. Think of tonight for a moment. You, my dear Peter, were the least important person there. Which is as it should be. It is not the doer that counts but those for whom things are done. But you were not able to accept that — and so you didn't feel the great elation that should have been yours."

"That's true," whispered Keating. He would not have admitted it to anyone else.

"You missed the beautiful pride of utter selflessness. Only when you learn to deny your ego, completely, only when you learn to be amused by such piddling sentimentalities as your little sex urges — only then will you achieve the greatness which I have always expected of you."

"You ... you believe that about me, Ellsworth? You really do?"

"I wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't. But to come back to love. Personal love, Peter, is a great evil — as everything personal. And it always leads to misery. Don't you see why? Personal love is an act of discrimination, of preference. It is an act of injustice — to every human being on earth whom you rob of the affection arbitrarily granted to one. You must love all men equally. But you cannot achieve so noble an emotion if you don't kill your selfish little choices. They are vicious and futile — since they contradict the first cosmic law — the basic equality of all men."

"You mean," said Keating, suddenly interested, "that in a ... in a philosophical way, deep down, I mean, we're all equal? All of us?"

"Of course," said Toohey.

Keating wondered why the thought was so warmly pleasant to him. He did not mind that this made him the equal of every pickpocket in the crowd gathered to celebrate his building tonight; it occurred to him dimly — and left him undisturbed, even though it contradicted the passionate quest for superiority that had driven him all his life. The contradiction did not matter; he was not thinking of tonight nor of the crowd; he was thinking of a man who had not been there tonight.

"You know, Ellsworth," he said, leaning forward, happy in an uneasy kind of way, "I ... I'd rather talk to you than do anything else, anything at all. I had so many places to go tonight — and I'm so much happier just sitting here with you. Sometimes I wonder how I'd ever go on without you."

"That," said Toohey, "is as it should be. Or else what are friends for?"

That winter the annual costume Arts Ball was an event of greater brilliance and originality than usual. Athelstan Beasely, the leading spirit of its organization, had had what he called a stroke of genius: all the architects were invited to come dressed as their best buildings. It was a huge success.

Peter Keating was the star of the evening. He looked wonderful as the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. An exact papier-mâché replica of his famous structure covered him from head to knees; one could not see his face, but his bright eyes peered from behind the windows of the top floor, and the crowning pyramid of the roof rose over his head; the colonnade hit him somewhere about the diaphragm, and he wagged a finger through the portals of the great entrance door. His legs were free to move with his usual elegance, in faultless dress trousers and patent-leather pumps.

Guy Francon was very impressive as the Frink National Bank Building, although the structure looked a little squatter than in the original, in order to allow for Francon's stomach; the Hadrian torch over his head had a real electric bulb lit by a miniature battery. Ralston Holcombe was magnificent as a state capitol, and Gordon L. Prescott was very masculine as a grain elevator. Eugene Pettingill waddled about on his skinny, ancient legs, small and bent, an imposing Park Avenue hotel, with horn-rimmed spectacles peering from under the majestic tower. Two wits engaged in a duel, butting each other in the belly with famous spires, great landmarks of the city that greet the ships approaching from across the ocean. Everybody had lots of fun.

Many of the architects, Athelstan Beasely in particular, commented resentfully on Howard Roark who had been invited and did not come. They had expected to see him dressed as the Enright House.

Dominique stopped in the hall and stood looking at the door, at the inscription: "HOWARD ROARK, ARCHITECT."

She had never seen his office. She had fought against coming here for a long time. But she had to see the place where he worked.

The secretary in the reception room was startled when Dominique gave her name, but announced the visitor to Roark. "Go right in, Miss Francon," she said.

Roark smiled when she entered his office; a faint smile without surprise.

"I knew you'd come here some day," he said. "Want me to show you the place?"

"What's that?" she asked.

His hands were smeared with clay; on a long table, among a litter of unfinished sketches, stood the clay model of a building, a rough study of angles and terraces.

"The Aquitania?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Do you always do that?"

"No. Not always. Sometimes. There's a hard problem here. I like to play with it for a while. It will probably be my favorite building — it's so difficult."

"Go ahead. I want to watch you doing that. Do you mind?"

"Not at all."

In a moment, he had forgotten her presence. She sat in a corner and watched his hands. She saw them molding walls. She saw them smash a part of the structure, and begin again, slowly, patiently, with a strange certainty even in his hesitation. She saw the palm of his hand smooth a long, straight plane, she saw an angle jerked across the space in the motion of his hand before she saw it in clay.

She rose and walked to the window. The buildings of the city far below looked no bigger than the model on his table. It seemed to her that she could see his hands shaping the setbacks, the corners, the roofs of all the structures below, smashing and molding again. Her hand moved absently, following the form of a distant building in rising steps, feeling a physical sense of possession, feeling it for him.

She turned back to the table. A strand of hair hung down over his face bent attentively to the model; he was not looking at her, he was looking at the shape under his fingers. It was almost as if she were watching his hands moving over the body of another woman. She leaned against the wall, weak with a feeling of violent, physical pleasure.

At the beginning of January, while the first steel columns rose from the excavations that were to become the Cord Building and the Aquitania Hotel, Roark worked on the drawings for the Temple.

When the first sketches were finished, he said to his secretary:

"Get me Steve Mallory."

"Mallory, Mr. Roark? Who ... Oh, yes, the shooting sculptor."

"The what?"

"He took a shot at Ellsworth Toohey, didn't he?"

"Did he? Yes, that's right."

"Is that the one you want, Mr. Roark?"

"That's the one."

For two days the secretary telephoned art dealers, galleries, architects, newspapers. No one could tell her what had become of Steven Mallory or where he could be found. On the third day she reported to Roark: "I've found an address, in the Village, which I'm told might be his. There's no telephone." Roark dictated a letter asking Mallory to telephone his office.

The letter was not returned, but a week passed without answer. Then Steven Mallory telephoned.

"Hello?" said Roark, when the secretary switched the call to him.

"Steven Mallory speaking," said a young, hard voice, in a way that left an impatient, belligerent silence after the words.

"I should like to see you, Mr. Mallory. Can we make an appointment for you to come to my office?"

"What do you want to see me about?"

"About a commission, of course. I want you to do some work for a building of mine." There was a long silence.

"All right," said Mallory; his voice sounded dead. He added: "Which building?"

"The Stoddard Temple. You may have heard ... "

"Yeah, I heard. You're doing it. Who hasn't heard? Will you pay me as much as you're paying your press agent?"

"I'm not paying the press agent. I'll pay you whatever you wish to ask."

"You know that can't be much."

"What time would it be convenient for you to come here?"

"Oh, hell, you name it. You know I'm not busy."

"Two o'clock tomorrow afternoon?"

"All right." He added: "I don't like your voice." Roark laughed. "I like yours. Cut it out and be here tomorrow at two."

"Okay." Mallory hung up.

Roark dropped the receiver, grinning. But the grin vanished suddenly, and he sat looking at the telephone, his face grave.

Mallory did not keep the appointment. Three days passed without a word from him. Then Roark went to find him in person.

The rooming house where Mallory lived was a dilapidated brownstone in an unlighted street that smelled of a fish market. There was a laundry and a cobbler on the ground floor, at either side of a narrow entrance. A slatternly landlady said: "Mallory? Fifth floor rear," and shuffled away indifferently. Roark climbed sagging wooden stairs lighted by bulbs stuck in a web of pipes. He knocked at a grimy door.

The door opened. A gaunt young man stood on the threshold; he had disheveled hair, a strong mouth with a square lower lip, and the most expressive eyes that Roark had ever seen. "What do you want?" he snapped. "Mr. Mallory?"

"Yeah."

"I'm Howard Roark."

Mallory laughed, leaning against the doorjamb, one arm stretched across the opening, with no intention of stepping aside. He was obviously drunk. "Well, well!" he said. "In person."

"May I come in?"

"What for?"

Roark sat down on the stair banister. "Why didn't you keep your appointment?"

"Oh, the appointment? Oh, yes. Well, I'll tell you," Mallory said gravely. "It was like this: I really intended to keep it, I really did, and I started out for your office, but on my way there I passed a movie theater that was showing Two Heads on a Pillow, so I went in. I just had to see Two Heads on a Pillow." He grinned, sagging against his stretched arm. "You'd better let me come in," said Roark quietly. "Oh, what the hell, come in."

The room was a narrow hole. There was an unmade bed in a corner, a litter of newspapers and old clothes, a gas ring, a framed landscape from the five-and-ten, representing some sort of sick brown meadows with sheep; there were no drawings or figures, no hints of the occupant's profession.

Roark pushed some books and a skillet off the only chair, and sat down. Mallory stood before him, grinning, swaying a little.

"You're doing it all wrong," said Mallory. "That's not the way it's done. You must be pretty hard up to come running after a sculptor. The way it's done is like this: You make me come to your office, and the first time I come you mustn't be there. The second time you must keep me waiting for an hour and a half, then come out into the reception room and shake hands and ask me whether I know the Wilsons of Podunk and say how nice that we have mutual friends, but you're in an awful hurry today and you'll call me up for lunch soon and then we'll talk business. Then you keep this up for two months. Then you give me the commission. Then you tell me that I'm no good and wasn't any good in the first place, and you throw the thing into the ash can. Then you hire Valerian Bronson and he does the job. That's the way it's done. Only not this time."

But his eyes were studying Roark intently, and his eyes had the certainty of a professional. As he spoke, his voice kept losing its swaggering gaiety, and it slipped to a dead flatness on the last sentences.

"No," said Roark, "not this time."

The boy stood looking at him silently.

"You're Howard Roark?" he asked. "I like your buildings. That's why I didn't want to meet you. So I wouldn't have to be sick every time I looked at them. I wanted to go on thinking that they had to be done by somebody who matched them."

"What if I do?"

"That doesn't happen."

But he sat down on the edge of the crumpled bed and slumped forward, his glance like a sensitive scale weighing Roark's features, impertinent in its open action of appraisal.

"Listen," said Roark, speaking clearly and very carefully, "I want you to do a statue for the Stoddard Temple. Give me a piece of paper and I'll write you a contract right now, stating that I will owe you a million dollars damages if I hire another sculptor or if your work is not used."

"You can speak normal. I'm not drunk. Not all the way. I understand."

"Well?"

"Why did you pick me?"

"Because you're a good sculptor."

"That's not true."

"That you're good?"

"No. That it's your reason. Who asked you to hire me?"

"Nobody."

"Some woman I laid?"

"I don't know any women you laid."

"Stuck on your building budget?"

"No. The budget's unlimited."

"Feel sorry for me?"

"No. Why should I?"

"Want to get publicity out of that shooting Toohey business?"

"Good God, no!"

"Well, what then?"

"Why did you fish for all that nonsense instead of the simplest reason?"

"Which?"

"That I like your work."

"Sure. That's what they all say. That's what we're all supposed to say and to believe. Imagine what would happen if somebody blew the lid off that one! So, all right, you like my work. What's the real reason?"

"I like your work."

Mallory spoke earnestly, his voice sober.

"You mean you saw the things I've done, and you like them — you — yourself — alone — without anyone telling you that you should like them or why you should like them — and you decided that you wanted me, for that reason — only for that reason — without knowing anything about me or giving a damn — only because of the things I've done and ... and what you saw in them — only because of that, you decided to hire me, and you went to the bother of finding me and coming here, and being insulted — only because you saw — and what you saw made me important to you, made you want me? Is that what you mean?"

"Just that," said Roark.

The things that pulled Mallory's eyes wide were frightening to see. Then he shook his head, and said very simply, in the tone of soothing himself:

"No."

He leaned forward. His voice sounded dead and pleading.

"Listen, Mr. Roark. I won't be mad at you. I just want to know. All right, I see that you're set on having me work for you, and you know you can get me, for anything you say, you don't have to sign any million-dollar contract, look at this room, you know you've got me, so why shouldn't you tell me the truth? It won't make any difference to you — and it's very important to me."

"What's very important to you?"

"Not to ... not to ... Look. I didn't think anybody'd ever want me again. But you do. All right. I'll go through it again. Only I don't want to think again that I'm working for somebody who ... who likes my work. That, I couldn't go through any more. I'll feel better if you tell me, I'll ... I'll feel calmer. Why should you put on an act for me? I'm nothing. I won't think less of you, if that's what you're afraid of. Don't you see? It's much more decent to tell me the truth. Then it will be simple and honest. I'll respect you more. Really, I will."

"What's the matter with you, kid? What have they done to you? Why do you want to say things like that?"

"Because ... " Mallory roared suddenly, and then his voice broke, and his head dropped, and he finished in a flat whisper: "because I've spent two years" — his hand circled limply indicating the room — "that's how I've spent them — trying to get used to the fact that what you're trying to tell me doesn't exist ... "

Roark walked over to him, lifted his chin, knocking it upward, and said:

"You're a God-damn fool. You have no right to care what I think of your work, what I am or why I'm here. You're too good for that. But if you want to know it — I think you're the best sculptor we've got. I think it, because your figures are not what men are, but what men could be — and should be. Because you've gone beyond the probable and made us see what is possible, but possible only through you. Because your figures are more devoid of contempt for humanity than any work I've ever seen. Because you have a magnificent respect for the human being. Because your figures are the heroic in man. And so I didn't come here to do you a favor or because I felt sorry for you or because you need a job pretty badly. I came for a simple, selfish reason — the same reason that makes a man choose the cleanest food he can find. It's a law of survival, isn't it? — to seek the best. I didn't come for your sake. I came for mine."

Mallory jerked himself away from him, and dropped face down on the bed, his two arms stretched out, one on each side of his head, hands closed into fists. The thin trembling of the shirt cloth on his back showed that he was sobbing; the shirt cloth and the fists that twisted slowly, digging into the pillow. Roark knew that he was looking at a man who had never cried before. He sat down on the side of the bed and could not take his eyes off the twisting wrists, even though the sight was hard to bear.

After a while Mallory sat up. He looked at Roark and saw the calmest, kindest face — a face without a hint of pity. It did not look like the countenance of men who watch the agony of another with a secret pleasure, uplifted by the sight of a beggar who needs their compassion; it did not bear the cast of the hungry soul that feeds upon another's humiliation. Roark's face seemed tired, drawn at the temples, as if he had just taken a beating. But his eyes were serene and they looked at Mallory quietly, a hard, clean glance of understanding — and respect.

"Lie down now," said Roar. "Lie still for a while."

"How did they ever let you survive?"

"Lie down. Rest. We'll talk afterward."

Mallory got up. Roark took him by the shoulders, forced him down, lifted his legs off the floor, lowered his head on the pillow. The boy did not resist.

Stepping back, Roark brushed against a table loaded with junk. Something clattered to the floor. Mallory jerked forward, trying to reach it first. Roark pushed his arm aside and picked up the object.

It was a small plaster plaque, the kind sold in cheap gift shops. It represented a baby sprawled on its stomach, dimpled rear forward, peeking coyly over its shoulder. A few lines, the structure of a few muscles showed a magnificent talent that could not be hidden, that broke fiercely through the rest; the rest was a deliberate attempt to be obvious, vulgar and trite, a clumsy effort, unconvincing and tortured. It was an object that belonged in a chamber of horrors.

Mallory saw Roark's hand begin to shake. Then Roark's arm went back and up, over his head, slowly, as if gathering the weight of air in the crook of his elbow; it was only a flash, but it seemed to last for minutes, the arm stood lifted and still — then it slashed forward, the plaque shot across the room and burst to pieces against the wall. It was the only time anyone had ever seen Roark murderously angry.

"Roark."

"Yes?"

"Roark, I wish I'd met you before you had a job to give me." He spoke without expression, his head lying back on the pillow, his eyes closed. "So that there would be no other reason mixed in. Because, you see, I'm very grateful to you. Not for giving me a job. Not for coming here. Not for anything you'll ever do for me. Just for what you are."

Then he lay without moving, straight and limp, like a man long past the stage of suffering. Roark stood at the window, looking at the wrenched room and at the boy on the bed. He wondered why he felt as if he were waiting. He was waiting for an explosion over their heads. It seemed senseless. Then he understood. He thought, this is how men feel, trapped in a shell hole; this room is not an accident of poverty, it's the footprint of a war; it's the devastation torn by explosives more vicious than any stored in the arsenals of the world. A war ... against? ... The enemy had no name and no face. But this boy was a comrade-in-arms, hurt in battle, and Roark stood over him, feeling a strange new thing, a desire to lift him in his arms and carry him to safety ... Only the hell and the safety had no known designations ... He kept thinking of Kent Lansing, trying to remember something Kent Lansing had said ...

Then Mallory opened his eyes, and lifted himself up on one elbow. Roark pulled the chair over to the bed and sat down.

"Now," he said, "talk. Talk about the things you really want said. Don't tell me about your family, your childhood, your friends or your feelings. Tell me about the things you think."

Mallory looked at him incredulously and whispered:

"How did you know that?"

Roark smiled and said nothing.

"How did you know what's been killing me? Slowly, for years, driving me to hate people when I don't want to hate ... Have you felt it, too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you — except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them, nothing, not even a sound they can recognize. You mean, you want to hear? You want to know what I do and why I do it, you want to know what I think! It's not boring to you? It's important?"

"Go ahead," said Roark.

Then he sat for hours, listening, while Mallory spoke of his work, of the thoughts behind his work, of the thoughts that shaped his life, spoke gluttonously, like a drowning man flung out to shore, getting drunk on huge, clean snatches of air.

Mallory came to Roark's office on the following morning, and Roark showed him the sketches of the Temple. When he stood at a drafting table, with a problem to consider, Mallory changed; there was no uncertainty in him, no remembrance of pain; the gesture of his hand taking the drawing was sharp and sure, like that of a soldier on duty. The gesture said that nothing ever done to him could alter the function of the thing within him that was now called into action. He had an unyielding, impersonal confidence; he faced Roark as an equal.

He studied the drawings for a long time, then raised his head. Everything about his face was controlled, except his eyes.

"Like it?" Roark asked.

"Don't use stupid words."

He held one of the drawings, walked to the window, stood looking down the sketch to the street to Roark's face and back again.

"It doesn't seem possible," he said. "Not this — and that." He waved the sketch at the street.

There was a poolroom on the corner of the street below; a rooming house with a Corinthian portico; a billboard advertising a Broadway musical; a line of pink-gray underwear fluttering on a roof.

"Not in the same city. Not on the same earth," said Mallory. "But you made it happen. It's possible ... I'll never be afraid again."

"Of what?"

Mallory put the sketch down on the table, cautiously. He answered:

"You said something yesterday about a first law. A law demanding that man seek the best ... It was funny ... The unrecognized genius — that's an old story. Have you ever thought of a much worse one — the genius recognized too well? ... That a great many men are poor fools who can't see the best — that's nothing. One can't get angry at that. But do you understand about the men who see it and don't want it?"

"No."

"No. You wouldn't. I spent all night thinking about you. I didn't sleep at all. Do you know what your secret is? It's your terrible innocence."

Roark laughed aloud, looking at the boyish face.

"No," said Mallory, "it's not funny. I know what I'm talking about — and you don't. You can't know. It's because of that absolute health of yours. You're so healthy that you can't conceive of disease. You know of it. But you don't really believe it. I do. I'm wiser than you are about some things, because I'm weaker. I understand — the other side. That's what did it to me ... what you saw yesterday."

"That's over."

"Probably. But not quite. I'm not afraid any more. But I know that the terror exists. I know the kind of terror it is. You can't conceive of that kind. Listen, what's the most horrible experience you can imagine? To me — it's being left, unarmed, in a sealed cell with a drooling beast of prey or a maniac who's had some disease that's eaten his brain out. You'd have nothing then but your voice — your voice and your thought. You'd scream to that creature why it should not touch you, you'd have the most eloquent words, the unanswerable words, you'd become the vessel of the absolute truth. And you'd see living eyes watching you and you'd know that the thing can't hear you, that it can't be reached, not reached, not in any way, yet it's breathing and moving there before you with a purpose of its own. That's horror. Well, that's what's hanging over the world, prowling somewhere through mankind, that same thing, something closed, mindless, utterly wanton, but something with an aim and a cunning of its own. I don't think I'm a coward, but I'm afraid of it. And that's all I know — only that it exists. I don't know its purpose, I don't know its nature."

"The principle behind the Dean," said Roark.

"What?"

"It's something I wonder about once in a while ... Mallory, why did you try to shoot Ellsworth Toohey?" He saw the boy's eyes, and he added: "You don't have to tell me if you don't like to talk about it."

"I don't like to talk about it," said Mallory, his voice tight. "But it was the right question to ask."

"Sit down," said Roark. "We'll talk about your commission."

Then Mallory listened attentively while Roark spoke of the building and of what he wanted from the sculptor. He concluded:

"Just one figure. It will stand here." He pointed to a sketch. "The place is built around it. The statue of a naked woman. If you understand the building, you understand what the figure must be. The human spirit. The heroic in man. The aspiration and the fulfillment, both. Uplifted in its quest — and uplifting by its own essence. Seeking God — and finding itself. Showing that there is no higher reach beyond its own form ... You're the only one who can do it for me."

"Yes."

"You'll work as I work for my clients. You know what I want — the rest is up to you. Do it any way you wish. I'd like to suggest the model, but if she doesn't fit your purpose, choose anyone you prefer."

"Who's your choice?"

"Dominique Francon."

"Oh, God!"

"Know her?"

"I've seen her. If I could have her ... Christ! there's no other woman so right, for this. She ... " He stopped. He added, deflated: "She won't pose. Certainly not for you."

"She will."

Guy Francon tried to object when he heard of it.

"Listen, Dominique," he said angrily, "there is a limit. There really is a limit — even for you. Why are you doing it? Why — for a building of Roark's of all things? After everything you've said and done against him — do you wonder people are talking? Nobody'd care or notice if it were anyone else. But you — and Roark! I can't go anywhere without having somebody ask me about it. What am I to do?"

"Order yourself a reproduction of the statue, Father. It's going to be beautiful."

Peter Keating refused to discuss it. But he met Dominique at a party and he asked, having intended not to ask it:

"Is it true that you're posing for a statue for Roark's temple?"

"Yes."

"Dominique, I don't like it."

"No?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I know I have no right ... It's only ... It's only that of all people, I don't want to see you being friendly with Roark. Not Roark. Anybody but Roark."

She looked interested: "Why?"

"I don't know."

Her glance of curious study worried him.

"Maybe," he muttered, "maybe it's because it has never seemed right that you should have such contempt for his work. It made me very happy that you had, but ... but it never seemed right — for you."

"It didn't, Peter?"

"No. But you don't like him as a person, do you?"

"No, I don't like him as a person."

Ellsworth Toohey was displeased. "It was most unwise of you, Dominique," he said in the privacy of her office. His voice did not sound smooth.

"I know it was."

"Can't you change your mind and refuse?"

"I won't change my mind, Ellsworth."

He sat down, and shrugged; after a while he smiled. "All right, my dear, have it your own way."

She ran a pencil through a line of copy and said nothing.

Toohey lighted a cigarette. "So he's chosen Steven Mallory for the job," he said.

"Yes. A funny coincidence, wasn't it?"

"It's no coincidence at all, my dear. Things like that are never a coincidence. There's a basic law behind it. Though I'm sure he doesn't know it and nobody helped him to choose."

"I believe you approve?"

"Wholeheartedly. It makes everything just right. Better than ever."

"Ellsworth, why did Mallory try to kill you?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. I don't know. I think Mr. Roark does. Or should. Incidentally, who selected you to pose for that statue? Roark or Mallory?"

"That's none of your business, Ellsworth."

"I see. Roark."

"Incidentally, I've told Roark that it was you who made Hopton Stoddard hire him."

He stopped his cigarette in midair; then moved again and placed it in his mouth.

"You did? Why?"

"I saw the drawings of the Temple."

"That good?"

"Better, Ellsworth."

"What did he say when you told him?"

"Nothing. He laughed."

"He did? Nice of him. I daresay many people will join him after a while."

Through the months of that winter Roark seldom slept more than three hours a night. There was a swinging sharpness in his movements, as if his body fed energy to all those around him. The energy ran through the walls of his office to three points of the city: to the Cord Building, in the center of Manhattan, a tower of copper and glass; to the Aquitania Hotel on Central Park South; and to the Temple on a rock over the Hudson, far north on Riverside Drive.

When they had time to meet, Austen Heller watched him, amused and pleased. "When these three are finished, Howard," he said, "nobody will be able to stop you. Not ever again. I speculate occasionally upon how far you'll go. You see, I've always had a weakness for astronomy."

On an evening in March Roark stood within the tall enclosure that had been erected around the site of the Temple, according to Stoddard's orders. The first blocks of stone, the base of future walls, rose above the ground. It was late and the workers had left. The place lay deserted, cut off from the world, dissolved in darkness; but the sky glowed, too luminous for the night below, as if the light had remained past the normal hour, in announcement of the coming spring. A ship's siren cried out once, somewhere on the river, and the sound seemed to come from a distant countryside, through miles of silence. A light still burned in the wooden shack built as a studio for Steven Mallory, where Dominique posed for him.

The Temple was to be a small building of gray limestone. Its lines were horizontal, not the lines reaching to heaven, but the lines of the earth. It seemed to spread over the ground like arms outstretched at shoulder-height, palms down, in great, silent acceptance. It did not cling to the soil and it did not crouch under the sky. It seemed to lift the earth, and its few vertical shafts pulled the sky down. It was scaled to human height in such a manner that it did not dwarf man, but stood as a setting that made his figure the only absolute, the gauge of perfection by which all dimensions were to be judged. When a man entered this temple, he would feel space molded around him, for him, as if it had waited for his entrance, to be completed. It was a joyous place, with the joy of exaltation that must be quiet. It was a place where one would come to feel sinless and strong, to find the peace of spirit never granted save by one's own glory.

There was no ornamentation inside, except the graded projections of the walls, and the vast windows. The place was not sealed under vaults, but thrown open to the earth around it, to the trees, the river, the sun — and to the skyline of the city in the distance, the skyscrapers, the shapes of man's achievement on earth. At the end of the room, facing the entrance, with the city as background, stood the figure of a naked human body.

There was nothing before him now in the darkness except the first stones, but Roark thought of the finished building, feeling it in the joints of his fingers, still remembering the movements of his pencil that had drawn it. He stood thinking of it. Then he walked across the rough, torn earth to the studio shack.

"Just a moment," said Mallory's voice when he knocked.

Inside the shack Dominique stepped down from the stand and pulled a robe on. Then Mallory opened the door.

"Oh, it's you?" he said. "We thought it was the watchman. What are you doing here so late?"

"Good evening, Miss Francon," said Roark, and she nodded curtly. "Sorry to interrupt, Steve."

"It's all right. We haven't been doing so well. Dominique can't get quite what I want tonight. Sit down, Howard. What the hell time is it?"

"Nine-thirty. If you're going to stay longer, want me to have some dinner sent up?"

"I don't know. Let's have a cigarette."

The place had an unpainted wooden floor, bare wooden rafters, a cast-iron stove glowing in a corner. Mallory moved about like a feudal host, with smudges of clay on his forehead. He smoked nervously, pacing up and down.

"Want to get dressed, Dominique?" he asked. "I don't think we'll do much more tonight." She didn't answer. She stood looking at Roark. Mallory reached the end of the room, whirled around, smiled at Roark: "Why haven't you ever come in before, Howard? Of course, if I'd been really busy, I'd have thrown you out. What, by the way, are you doing here at this hour?"

"I just wanted to see the place tonight. Couldn't get here earlier."

"Is this what you want, Steve?" Dominique asked suddenly. She took her robe off and walked naked to the stand. Mallory looked from her to Roark and back again. Then he saw what he had been struggling to see all day. He saw her body standing before him, straight and tense, her head thrown back, her arms at her sides, palms out, as she stood for many days; but now her body was alive, so still that it seemed to tremble, saying what he had wanted to hear: a proud, reverent, enraptured surrender to a vision of her own, the right moment, the moment before the figure would sway and break, the moment touched by the reflection of what she saw.

Mallory's cigarette went flying across the room.

"Hold it, Dominique!" he cried. "Hold it! Hold it!"

He was at his stand before the cigarette hit the ground. He worked, and Dominique stood without moving, and Roark stood facing her, leaning against the wall.

In April the walls of the Temple rose in broken lines over the ground. On moonlit nights they had a soft, smeared, underwater glow. The tall fence stood on guard around them.

After the day's work, four people would often remain at the site — Roark, Mallory, Dominique and Mike Donnigan. Mike had not missed employment on a single building of Roark's.

The four of them sat together in Mallory's shack, after all the others had left. A wet cloth covered the unfinished statue. The door of the shack stood open to the first warmth of a spring night. A tree branch hung outside, with three new leaves against the black sky, stars trembling like drops of water on the edges of the leaves. There were no chairs in the shack. Mallory stood at the cast-iron stove, fixing hot dogs and coffee. Mike sat on the model's stand, smoking a pipe. Roark lay stretched out on the floor, propped up on his elbows, Dominique sat on a kitchen stool, a thin silk robe wrapped about her, her bare feet on the planks of the floor.

They did not speak about their work. Mallory told outrageous stories and Dominique laughed like a child. They talked about nothing in particular, sentences that had meaning only in the sound of the voices, in the warm gaiety, in the ease of complete relaxation. They were simply four people who liked being there together. The walls rising in the darkness beyond the open door gave sanction to their rest, gave them the right to lightness, the building on which they had all worked together, the building that was like a low, audible harmony to the sound of their voices. Roark laughed as Dominique had never seen him laugh anywhere else, his mouth loose and young.

They stayed there late into the night. Mallory poured coffee into a mongrel assortment of cracked cups. The odor of coffee met the odor of the new leaves outside.

In May work was stopped on the construction of the Aquitania Hotel.

Two of the owners had been cleaned out in the stock market; a third got his funds attached by a lawsuit over an inheritance disputed by someone; a fourth embezzled somebody else's shares. The corporation blew up in a tangle of court cases that were to require years of untangling. The building had to wait, unfinished.

"I'll straighten it out, if I have to murder a few of them," Kent Lansing told Roark. "I'll get it out of their hands. We'll finish it some day, you and I. But it will take time. Probably a long time. I won't tell you to be patient. Men like you and me would not survive beyond their first fifteen years if they did not acquire the patience of a Chinese executioner. And the hide of a battleship."

Ellsworth Toohey laughed, sitting on the edge of Dominique's desk. "The Unfinished Symphony — thank God," he said.

Dominique used that in her column. "The Unfinished Symphony on Central Park South," she wrote. She did not say, "thank God." The nickname was repeated. Strangers noticed the odd sight of an expensive structure on an important street, left gaping with empty windows, half-covered walls, naked beams; when they asked what it was, people who had never heard of Roark or of the story behind the building, snickered and answered: "Oh, that's the Unfinished Symphony."

Late at night Roark would stand across the street, under the trees of the Park, and look at the black, dead shape among the glowing structures of the city's skyline. His hands would move as they had moved over the clay model; at that distance, a broken projection could be covered by the palm of his hand; but the instinctive completing motion met nothing but air.

He forced himself sometimes to walk through the building. He walked on shivering planks hung over emptiness, through rooms without ceilings and rooms without floors, to the open edges where girders stuck out like bones through a broken skin.

An old watchman lived in a cubbyhole at the back of the ground floor. He knew Roark and let him wander around. Once, he stopped Roark on the way out and said suddenly: "I had a son once — almost. He was born dead." Something had made him say that, and he looked at Roark, not quite certain of what he had wanted to say. But Roark smiled, his eyes closed, and his hand covered the old man's shoulder, like a handshake, and then he walked away.

It was only the first few weeks. Then he made himself forget the Aquitania.

On an evening in October Roark and Dominique walked together through the completed Temple. It was to be opened publicly in a week, the day after Stoddard's return. No one had seen it except those who had worked on its construction.

It was a clear, quiet evening. The site of the Temple lay empty and silent. The red of the sunset on the limestone walls was like the first light of morning.

They stood looking at the Temple, and then stood inside, before the marble figure, saying nothing to each other. The shadows in the molded space around them seemed shaped by the same hand that had shaped the walls. The ebbing motion of light flowed in controlled discipline, like the sentences of a speech giving voice to the changing facets of the walls.

"Roark ... "

"Yes, my dearest?"

"No ... nothing ... "

They walked back to the car together, his hand clasping her wrist.

12.

THE OPENING of the Stoddard Temple was announced for the afternoon of November first.

The press agent had done a good job. People talked about the event, about Howard Roark, about the architectural masterpiece which the city was to expect.

On the morning of October 31 Hopton Stoddard returned from his journey around the world. Ellsworth Toohey met him at the pier.

On the morning of November 1 Hopton Stoddard issued a brief statement announcing that there would be no opening. No explanation was given.

On the morning of November 2 the New York Banner came out with the column "One Small Voice" by Ellsworth M. Toohey subtitled "Sacrilege." It read as follows:

"It is not our function — paraphrasing a philosopher whom we do not like — to be a fly swatter, but when a fly acquires delusions of grandeur, the best of us must stoop to do a little job of extermination.

"There has been a great deal of talk lately about somebody named Howard Roark. Since freedom of speech is our sacred heritage and includes the freedom to waste one's time, there would have been no harm in such talk — beyond the fact that one could find so many endeavors more profitable than discussions of a man who seems to have nothing to his credit except a building that was begun and could not be completed. There would have been no harm, if the ludicrous had not become the tragic — and the fraudulent.

"Howard Roark — as most of you have not heard and are not likely to hear again — is an architect. A year ago he was entrusted with an assignment of extraordinary responsibility. He was commissioned to erect a great monument in the absence of the owner who believed in him and gave him complete freedom of action. If the terminology of our criminal law could be applied to the realm of art, we would have to say that what Mr. Roark delivered constitutes the equivalent of spiritual embezzlement.

"Mr. Hopton Stoddard, the noted philanthropist, had intended to present the City of New York with a Temple of Religion, a nonsectarian cathedral symbolizing the spirit of human faith. What Mr. Roark has built for him might be a warehouse — though it does not seem practical. It might be a brothel — which is more likely, if we consider some of its sculptural ornamentation. It is certainly not a temple.

"It seems as if a deliberate malice had reversed in this building every conception proper to a religious structure. Instead of being austerely enclosed, this alleged temple is wide open, like a western saloon. Instead of a mood of deferential sorrow, befitting a place where one contemplates eternity and realizes the insignificance of man, this building has a quality of loose, orgiastic elation. Instead of the soaring lines reaching for heaven, demanded by the very nature of a temple, as a symbol of man's quest for something higher than his little ego, this building is flauntingly horizontal, its belly in the mud, thus declaring its allegiance to the carnal, glorifying the gross pleasures of the flesh above those of the spirit. The statue of a nude female in a place where men come to be uplifted speaks for itself and requires no further comment.

"A person entering a temple seeks release from himself. He wishes to humble his pride, to confess his unworthiness, to beg forgiveness. He finds fulfillment in a sense of abject humility. Man's proper posture in a house of God is on his knees. Nobody in his right mind would kneel within Mr. Roark's temple. The place forbids it. The emotions it suggests are of a different nature: arrogance, audacity, defiance, self-exaltation. It is not a house of God, but the cell of a megalomaniac. It is not a temple, but its perfect antithesis, an insolent mockery of all religion. We would call it pagan but for the fact that the pagans were notoriously good architects.

"This column is not the supporter of any particular creed, but simple decency demands that we respect the religious convictions of our fellow men. We felt we must explain to the public the nature of this deliberate attack on religion. We cannot condone an outrageous sacrilege.

"If we seem to have forgotten our function as a critic of purely architectural values, we can say only that the occasion does not call for it. It is a mistake to glorify mediocrity by an effort at serious criticism. We seem to recall something or other that this Howard Roark has built before, and it had the same ineptitude, the same pedestrian quality of an overambitious amateur. All God's chillun may have wings, but, unfortunately, this is not true of all God's geniuses. "And that, my friends, is that. We are glad today's chore is over. We really do not enjoy writing obituaries."

On November 3 Hopton Stoddard filed suit against Howard Roark for breach of contract and malpractice, asking damages; he asked a sum sufficient to have the Temple altered by another architect.

It had been easy to persuade Hopton Stoddard. He had returned from his journey, crushed by the universal spectacle of religion, most particularly by the various forms in which the promise of hell confronted him all over the earth. He had been driven to the conclusion that his life qualified him for the worst possible hereafter under any system of faith. It had shaken what remained of his mind. The ship stewards, on his return trip, had felt certain that the old gentleman was senile.

On the afternoon of his return Ellsworth Toohey took him to see the Temple. Toohey said nothing. Hopton Stoddard stared, and Toohey heard Stoddard's false teeth clicking spasmodically. The place did not resemble anything Stoddard had seen anywhere in the world; nor anything he had expected. He did not know what to think. When he turned a glance of desperate appeal upon Toohey, Stoddard's eyes looked like Jell-O. He waited. In that moment, Toohey could have convinced him of anything. Toohey spoke and said what he said later in his column.

"But you told me this Roark was good!" Stoddard moaned in panic.

"I had expected him to be good," Toohey answered coldly.

"But then — why?"

"I don't know," said Toohey — and his accusing glance gave Stoddard to understand that there was an ominous guilt behind it all, and that the guilt was Stoddard's.

Toohey said nothing in the limousine, on their way back to Stoddard's apartment, while Stoddard begged him to speak. He would not answer. The silence drove Stoddard to terror. In the apartment, Toohey led him to an armchair and stood before him, somber as a judge.

"Hopton, I know why it happened."

"Oh, why?"

"Can you think of any reason why I should have lied to you?"

"No, of course not, you're the greatest expert and the most honest man living, and I don't understand, I just simply don't understand at all!"

"I do. When I recommended Roark, I had every reason to expect — to the best of my honest judgment — that he would give you a masterpiece. But he didn't. Hopton, do you know what power can upset all the calculations of men?"

"W-what power?"

"God has chosen this way to reject your offering. He did not consider you worthy of presenting Him with a shrine. I guess you can fool me, Hopton, and all men, but you can't fool God. He knows that your record is blacker than anything I suspected."

He went on speaking for a long time, calmly, severely, to a silent huddle of terror. At the end, he said:

"It seems obvious, Hopton, that you cannot buy forgiveness by starting at the top. Only the pure in heart can erect a shrine. You must go through many humbler steps of expiation before you reach that stage. You must atone to your fellow men before you can atone to God. This building was not meant to be a temple, but an institution of human charity. Such as a home for subnormal children."

Hopton Stoddard would not commit himself to that. "Afterward, Ellsworth, afterward," he moaned. "Give me time." He agreed to sue Roark, as Toohey suggested, for recovery of the costs of alterations, and later to decide what these alterations would be.

"Don't be shocked by anything I will say or write about this," Toohey told him in parting. "I shall be forced to stage a few things which are not quite true. I must protect my own reputation from a disgrace which is your fault, not mine. Just remember that you have sworn never to reveal who advised you to hire Roark."

On the following day "Sacrilege" appeared in the Banner and set the fuse. The announcement of Stoddard's suit lighted it.

Nobody would have felt an urge to crusade about a building; but religion had been attacked; the press agent had prepared the ground too well, the spring of public attention was wound, a great many people could make use of it.

The clamor of indignation that rose against Howard Roark and his temple astonished everyone, except Ellsworth Toohey. Ministers damned the building in sermons. Women's clubs passed resolutions of protest. A Committee of Mothers made page eight of the newspapers, with a petition that shrieked something about the protection of their children. A famous actress wrote an article on the essential unity of all the arts, explained that the Stoddard Temple had no sense of structural diction, and spoke of the time when she had played Mary Magdalene in a great Biblical drama. A society woman wrote an article on the exotic shrines she had seen in her dangerous jungle travels, praised the touching faith of the savages and reproached modern man for cynicism; the Stoddard Temple, she said, was a symptom of softness and decadence; the illustration showed her in breeches, one slim foot on the neck of a dead lion. A college professor wrote a letter to the editor about his spiritual experiences and stated that he could not have experienced them in a place like the Stoddard Temple. Kiki Holcombe wrote a letter to the editor about her views on life and death.

The A.G.A. issued a dignified statement denouncing the Stoddard Temple as a spiritual and artistic fraud. Similar statements, with less dignity and more slang, were issued by the Councils of American Builders, Writers and Artists. Nobody had ever heard of them, but they were Councils and this gave weight to their voice. One man would say to another: "Do you know that the Council of American Builders has said this temple is a piece of architectural tripe?" in a tone suggesting intimacy with the best of the art world. The other wouldn't want to reply that he had not heard of such a group, but would answer: "I expected them to say it. Didn't you?"

Hopton Stoddard received so many letters of sympathy that he began to feel quite happy. He had never been popular before. Ellsworth, he thought, was right; his brother men were forgiving him; Ellsworth was always right.

The better newspapers dropped the story after a while. But the Banner kept it going. It had been a boon to the Banner. Gail Wynand was away, sailing his yacht through the Indian Ocean, and Alvah Scarret was stuck for a crusade. This suited him. Ellsworth Toohey needed to make no suggestions; Scarret rose to the occasion all by himself.

He wrote about the decline of civilization and deplored the loss of the simple faith. He sponsored an essay contest for high-school students on "Why I Go to Church." He ran a series of illustrated articles on "The Churches of Our Childhood." He ran photographs of religious sculpture through the ages — the Sphinx, gargoyles, totem poles — and gave great prominence to pictures of Dominique's statue, with proper captions of indignation, but omitting the model's name. He ran cartoons of Roark as a barbarian with bearskin and club. He wrote many clever things about the Tower of Babel that could not reach heaven and about Icarus who flopped on his wax wings.

Ellsworth Toohey sat back and watched. He made two minor suggestions: he found, in the Banner's morgue, the photograph of Roark at the opening of the Enright House, the photograph of a man's face in a moment of exaltation, and he had it printed in the Banner, over the caption: "Are you happy, Mr. Superman?" He made Stoddard open the Temple to the public while awaiting the trial of his suit. The Temple attracted crowds of people who left obscene drawings and inscriptions on the pedestal of Dominique's statue.

There were a few who came, and saw, and admired the building in silence. But they were the kind who do not take part in public issues. Austen Heller wrote a furious article in defense of Roark and of the Temple. But he was not an authority on architecture or religion, and the article was drowned in the storm.

Howard Roark did nothing.

He was asked for a statement, and he received a group of reporters in his office. He spoke without anger. He said: "I can't tell anyone anything about my building. If I prepared a hash of words to stuff into other people's brains, it would be an insult to them and to me. But I am glad you came here. I do have something to say. I want to ask every man who is interested in this to go and see the building, to look at it and then to use the words of his own mind, if he cares to speak."

The Banner printed the interview as follows: "Mr. Roark, who seems to be a publicity hound, received reporters with an air of swaggering insolence and stated that the public mind was hash. He did not choose to talk, but he seemed well aware of the advertising angles in the situation. All he cared about, he explained, was to have his building seen by as many people as possible."

Roark refused to hire an attorney to represent him at the coming trial. He said he would handle his own defense and refused to explain how he intended to handle it, in spite of Austen Heller's angry protests.

"Austen, there are some rules I'm perfectly willing to obey. I'm willing to wear the kind of clothes everybody wears, to eat the same food and use the same subways. But there are some things which I can't do their way — and this is one of them."

"What do you know about courtrooms and law? He's going to win."

"To win what?"

"His case."

"Is the case of any importance? There's nothing I can do to stop him from touching the building. He owns it. He can blast it off the face of the earth or make a glue factory out of it. He can do it whether I win that suit or lose it."

"But he'll take your money to do it with."

"Yes. He might take my money."

Steven Mallory made no comment on anything. But his face looked as it had looked on the night Roark met him for the first time.

"Steve, talk about it, if it will make it easier for you," Roark said to him one evening.

"There's nothing to talk about," Mallory answered indifferently. "I told you I didn't think they'd let you survive."

"Rubbish. You have no right to be afraid for me."

"I'm not afraid for you. What would be the use? It's something else."

Days later, sitting on the window sill in Roark's room, looking out at the street, Mallory said suddenly:

"Howard, do you remember what I told you about the beast I'm afraid of? I know nothing about Ellsworth Toohey. I had never seen him before I shot at him. I had only read what he writes. Howard, I shot at him because I think he knows everything about that beast."

Dominique came to Roark's room on the evening when Stoddard announced his lawsuit. She said nothing. She put her bag down on a table and stood removing her gloves, slowly, as if she wished to prolong the intimacy of performing a routine gesture here, in his room; she looked down at her fingers. Then she raised her head. Her face looked as if she knew his worst suffering and it was hers and she wished to bear it like this, coldly, asking no words of mitigation.

"You're wrong," he said. They could always speak like this to each other, continuing a conversation they had not begun. His voice was gentle. "I don't feel that."

"I don't want to know."

"I want you to know. What you're thinking is much worse than the truth. I don't believe it matters to me — that they're going to destroy it. Maybe it hurts so much that I don't even know I'm hurt. But I don't think so. If you want to carry it for my sake, don't carry more than I do. I'm not capable of suffering completely. I never have. It goes only down to a certain point and then it stops. As long as there is that untouched point, it's not really pain. You mustn't look like that."

"Where does it stop?"

"Where I can think of nothing and feel nothing except that I designed that temple. I built it. Nothing else can seem very important."

"You shouldn't have built it. You shouldn't have delivered it to the sort of thing they're doing."

"That doesn't matter. Not even that they'll destroy it. Only that it had existed."

She shook her head. "Do you see what I was saving you from when I took commissions away from you? ... To give them no right to do this to you ... No right to live in a building of yours ... No right to touch you ... not in any way ... "

When Dominique walked into Toohey's office, he smiled, an eager smile of welcome, unexpectedly sincere. He forgot to control it while his eyebrows moved into a frown of disappointment; the frown and the smile remained ludicrously together for a moment. He was disappointed, because it was not her usual dramatic entrance; he saw no anger, no mockery; she entered like a bookkeeper on a business errand. She asked:

"What do you intend to accomplish by it?"

He tried to recapture the exhilaration of their usual feud. He

"Sit down, my dear. I'm delighted to see you. Quite frankly and helplessly delighted. It really took you too long. I expected you here much sooner. I've had so many compliments on that little article of mine, but, honestly, it was no fun at all, I wanted to hear what you'd say."

"What do you intend to accomplish by it?"

"Look, darling, I do hope you didn't mind what I said about that uplifting statue of yours. I thought you d understand I just couldn't pass up that one."

"What is the purpose of that lawsuit?"

"Oh well, you want to make me talk. And I did so want to hear you. But half a pleasure is better than none. I want to talk. I've waited for you so impatiently. But I do wish you'd sit down, I'll be more comfortable ... No? Well, as you prefer, so long as you don't run away. The lawsuit? Well, isn't it obvious?"

"How is it going to stop him?" she asked in the tone one would use to recite a list of statistics. "It will prove nothing, whether he wins or loses. The whole thing is just a spree for great number of louts, filthy but pointless. I did not think you wasted your time on stink bombs. All of it will be forgotten before Christmas."

"My God, but I must be a failure! I never thought of myself as such a poor teacher. That you should have learned so little in two years of close association with me! It's really discouraging. Since you are the most intelligent woman I know, the fault must be mine. Well, let's see, you did learn one thing: that I don't waste my time. Quite correct. I don't. Right, my dear, everything will be forgotten by next Christmas. And that, you see, will be the achievement. You can fight a live issue. You can't fight a dead one. Dead issues, like all dead things, don't just vanish, but leave some decomposing matter behind. A most unpleasant thing to carry on your name. Mr. Hopton Stoddard will be thoroughly forgotten. The Temple will be forgotten. The lawsuit will be forgotten. But here's what will remain: 'Howard Roark? Why, how could you trust a man like that? He's an enemy of religion. He's completely immortal. First thing you know, he'll gyp you on your construction costs.' 'Roark? He's no good — why, a client had to sue him because he made such a botch of a building.' 'Roark? Roark? Wait a moment, isn't that the guy who got into all the papers over some sort of a mess? Now what was it? Some rotten kind of scandal, the owner of the building — I think the place was a disorderly house — anyway the owner had to sue him. You don't want to get involved with a notorious character like that. What for, when there are so many decent architects to choose from?' Fight that, my dear. Tell me a way to fight it. Particularly when you have no weapons except your genius, which is not a weapon but a great liability."

Her eyes were disappointing; they listened patiently, an unmoving glance that would not become anger. She stood before his desk, straight, controlled, like a sentry in a storm who knows that he has to take it and has to remain there even when he can take it no longer.

"I believe you want me to continue," said Toohey. "Now you see the peculiar effectiveness of a dead issue. You can't talk your way out of it, you can't explain, you can't defend yourself. Nobody wants to listen. It is difficult enough to acquire fame. It is impossible to change its nature once you've acquired it. No, you can never ruin an architect by proving that he's a bad architect. But you can ruin him because he's an atheist, or because somebody sued him, or because he slept with some woman, or because he pulls wings off bottleflies. You'll say it doesn't make sense? Of course it doesn't. That's why it works. Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight the unreasonable? The trouble with you, my dear, and with most people, is that you don't have sufficient respect for the senseless. The senseless is the major factor in our lives. You have no chance if it is your enemy. But if you can make it become your ally — ah, my dear! ... Look, Dominique, I will stop talking the moment you show a sign of being frightened."

"Go on," she said.

"I think you should now ask me a question, or perhaps you don't like to be obvious and feel that I must guess the question myself? I think you're right. The question is, why did I choose Howard Roark? Because — to quote my own article — it is not my function to be a fly swatter. I quote this now with a somewhat different meaning, but we'll let that pass. Also, this has helped me to get something I wanted from Hopton Stoddard, but that's only a minor side-issue, an incidental, just pure gravy. Principally, however, the whole thing was an experiment. Just a test skirmish, shall we say? The results are most gratifying. If you were not involved as you are, you'd be the one person who'd appreciate the spectacle. Really, you know, I've done very little when you consider the extent of what followed. Don't you find it interesting to see a huge, complicated piece of machinery, such as our society, all levers and belts and interlocking gears, the kind that looks as if one would need an army to operate it — and you find that by pressing your little finger against one spot, the one vital spot, the center of all its gravity, you can make the thing crumble into a worthless heap of scrap iron? It can be done, my dear. But it takes a long time. It takes centuries. I have the advantage of many experts who came before me. I think I shall be the last and the successful one of the line, because — though not abler than they were — I see more clearly what we're after. However, that's abstraction. Speaking of concrete reality, don't you find anything amusing in my little experiment? I do. For instance, do you notice that all the wrong people are on the wrong sides? Alvah Scarret, the college professors, the newspaper editors, the respectable mothers and the Chambers of Commerce should have come flying to the defense of Howard Roark — if they value their own lives. But they didn't. They are upholding Hopton Stoddard. On the other hand I heard that some screwy bunch of cafeteria radicals called 'The New League of Proletarian Art' tried to enlist in support of Howard Roark — they said he was a victim of capitalism — when they should have known that Hopton Stoddard is their champion. Roark, by the way, had the good sense to decline. He understands. You do. I do. Not many others. Oh, well. Scrap iron has its uses."

She turned to leave the room.

"Dominique, you're not going?" He sounded hurt. "You won't say anything? Not anything at all?"

"No."

"Dominique, you're letting me down. And how I waited for you! I'm a very self-sufficient person, as a rule, but I do need an audience once in a while. You're the only person with whom I can be myself. I suppose it's because you have such contempt for me that nothing I say can make any difference. You see, I know that, but I don't care. Also, the methods I use on other people would never work on you. Strangely enough, only my honesty will. Hell, what's the use of accomplishing a skillful piece of work if nobody knows that you've accomplished it? Had you been your old self, you'd tell me, at this point, that that is the psychology of a murderer who's committed the perfect crime and then confesses because he can't bear the idea that nobody knows it's a perfect crime. And I'd answer that you're right. I want an audience. That's the trouble with victims — they don't even know they're victims, which is as it should be, but it does become monotonous and takes half the fun away. You're such a rare treat — a victim who can appreciate the artistry of its own execution ... For God's sake, Dominique, are you leaving when I'm practically begging you to remain?"

She put her hand on the doorknob. He shrugged and settled back in his chair.

"All right," he said. "Incidentally, don't try to buy Hopton Stoddard out. He's eating out of my hand just now. He won't sell." She had opened the door, but she stopped and pulled it shut again. "Oh, yes, of course I know that you've tried, it's no use. You're not that rich. You haven't enough to buy that temple and you couldn't raise enough. Also, Hopton won't accept any money from you to pay for the alterations. I know you've offered that, too. He wants it from Roark. By the way, I don't think Roark would like it if I let him know that you've tried."

He smiled in a manner that demanded a protest. Her face gave no answer. She turned to the door again. "Just one more question, Dominique. Mr. Stoddard's attorney wants to know whether he can call you as a witness. An expert on architecture. You will testify for the plaintiff, of course?"

"Yes. I will testify for the plaintiff."

The case of Hopton Stoddard versus Howard Roark opened in February of 1931.

The courtroom was so full that mass reactions could be expressed only by a slow motion running across the spread of heads, a sluggish wave like the ripple under the tight-packed skin of a sea lion.

The crowd, brown and streaked with subdued color, looked like a fruitcake of all the arts, with the cream of the A.G.A. rich and heavy on top. There were distinguished men and well-dressed, tight-lipped women; each woman seemed to feel an exclusive proprietorship of the art practiced by her escort, a monopoly guarded by resentful glances at the others. Almost everybody knew almost everybody else. The room had the atmosphere of a convention, an opening night and a family picnic. There was a feeling of "our bunch,"

"our boys,"

"our show."

Steven Mallory, Austen Heller, Roger Enright, Kent Lansing and Mike sat together in one corner. They tried not to look around them. Mike was worried about Steven Mallory. He kept close to Mallory, insisted on sitting next to him and glanced at him whenever a particularly offensive bit of conversation reached them. Mallory noticed it at last, and said: "Don't worry, Mike. I won't scream. I won't shoot anyone."

"Watch your stomach, kid," said Mike, "just watch your stomach. A man can't get sick just because he oughta."

"Mike, do you remember the night when we stayed so late that it was almost daylight, and Dominique's car was out of gas, and there were no busses, and we all decided to walk home, and there was sun on the rooftops by the time the first one of us got to his house?"

"That's right. You think about that, and I'll think about the granite quarry."

"What granite quarry?"

"It's something made me very sick once, but then it turned out it make no difference at all, in the long run."

Beyond the windows the sky was white and flat like frosted glass. The light seemed to come from the banks of snow on roofs and ledges, an unnatural light that made everything in the room look naked.

The judge sat hunched on his high bench as if he were roosting. He had a small face, wizened into virtue. He kept his hands upright in front of his chest, the fingertips pressed together. Hopton Stoddard was not present. He was represented by his attorney a handsome gentleman, tall and grave as an ambassador.

Roark sat alone at the defense table. The crowd had stared at him and given up angrily, finding no satisfaction. He did not look crushed and he did not look defiant. He looked impersonal and calm. He was not like a public figure in a public place; he was like a man alone in his own room, listening to the radio. He took no notes; there were no papers on the table before him, only a large brown envelope. The crowd would have forgiven anything, except a man who could remain normal under the vibrations of its enormous collective sneer. Some of them had come prepared to pity him; all of them hated him after the first few minutes.

The plaintiff's attorney stated his case in a simple opening address; it was true, he admitted, that Hopton Stoddard had given Roark full freedom to design and build the Temple; the point was, however, that Mr. Stoddard had clearly specified and expected a temple; the building in question could not be considered a temple by any known standards; as the plaintiff proposed to prove with the help of the best authorities in the field.

Roark waived his privilege to make an opening statement to the jury.

Ellsworth Monkton Toohey was the first witness called by the plaintiff. He sat on the edge of the witness chair and leaned back, resting on the end of his spine: he lifted one leg and placed it horizontally across the other. He looked amused — but managed to suggest that his amusement was a well-bred protection against looking bored.

The attorney went through a long list of questions about Mr. Toohey's professional qualifications, including the number of copies sold of his book Sermons in Stone. Then he read aloud Toohey's column "Sacrilege" and asked him to state whether he had written it. Toohey replied that he had. There followed a list of questions in erudite terms on the architectural merits of the Temple. Toohey proved that it had none. There followed an historical review. Toohey, speaking easily and casually, gave a brief sketch of all known civilizations and of their outstanding religious monuments — from the Incas to the Phoenicians to the Easter Islanders — including, whenever possible, the dates when these monuments were begun and the dates when they were completed, the number of workers employed in the construction and the approximate cost in modern American dollars. The audience listened punch-drunk.

Toohey proved that the Stoddard Temple contradicted every brick, stone and precept of history. "I have endeavored to show," he said in conclusion, "that the two essentials of the conception of a temple are a sense of awe and a sense of man's humility. We have noted the gigantic proportions of religious edifices, the soaring lines, the horrible grotesques of monster-like gods, or, later, gargoyles. All of it tends to impress upon man his essential insignificance, to crush him by sheer magnitude, to imbue him with that sacred terror which leads to the meekness of virtue. The Stoddard Temple is a brazen denial of our entire past, an insolent 'No' flung in the face of history. I may venture a guess as to the reason why this case has aroused such public interest. All of us have recognized instinctively that it involves a moral issue much beyond its legal aspects. This building is a monument to a profound hatred of humanity. It is one man's ego defying the most sacred impulses of all mankind, of every man on the street, of every man in this courtroom!"

This was not a witness in court, but Ellsworth Toohey addressing a meeting — and the reaction was inevitable: the audience burst into applause. The judge struck his gavel and made a threat to have the courtroom cleared. Order was restored, but not to the faces of the crowd: the faces remained lecherously self-righteous. It was pleasant to be singled out and brought into the case as an injured party. Three-fourths of them had never seen the Stoddard Temple.

"Thank you, Mr. Toohey," said the attorney, faintly suggesting a bow. Then he turned to Roark and said with delicate courtesy: "Your witness."

"No questions," said Roark.

Ellsworth Toohey raised one eyebrow and left the stand regretfully.

"Mr. Peter Keating!" called the attorney. Peter Keating's face looked attractive and fresh, as if he had had a good night's sleep. He mounted the witness stand with a collegiate sort of gusto, swinging his shoulders and arms unnecessarily. He took the oath and answered the first questions gaily. His pose in the witness chair was strange: his torso slumped to one side with swaggering ease, an elbow on the chair's arm; but his feet were planted awkwardly straight, and his knees were pressed tight together. He never looked at Roark.

"Will you please name some of the outstanding buildings which you have designed, Mr. Keating?" the attorney asked.

Keating began a list of impressive names; the first few came fast, the rest slower and slower, as if he wished to be stopped; the last one died in the air, unfinished.

"Aren't you forgetting the most important one, Mr. Keating?" the attorney asked. "Didn't you design the Cosmo-Slotnick Building?"

"Yes," whispered Keating.

"Now, Mr. Keating, you attended the Stanton Institute of Technology at the same period as Mr. Roark?"

"Yes."

"What can you tell us about Mr. Roark's record there?"

"He was expelled."

"He was expelled because he was unable to live up to the Institute's high standard of requirements?"

"Yes. Yes, that was it."

The judge glanced at Roark. A lawyer would have objected to this testimony as irrelevant. Roark made no objection.

"At that time, did you think that he showed any talent for the profession of architecture?"

"No."

"Will you please speak a little louder, Mr. Keating?"

"I didn't ... think he had any talent."

Queer things were happening to Keating's verbal punctuation: some words came out crisply, as if he dropped an exclamation point after each; others ran together, as if he would not stop to let himself hear them. He did not look at the attorney. He kept his eyes on the audience. At times, he looked like a boy out on a lark, a boy who has just drawn a mustache on the face of a beautiful girl on a subway toothpaste ad. Then he looked as if he were begging the crowd for support — as if he were on trial before them.

"At one time you employed Mr. Roark in your office?"

"Yes."

"And you found yourself forced to fire him?"

"Yes ... we did."

"For incompetence?"

"Yes."

"What can you tell us about Mr. Roark's subsequent career?"

"Well, you know, 'career' is a relative term. In volume of achievement any draftsman in our office has done more than Mr. Roark. We don't call one or two buildings a career. We put up that many every month or so."

"Will you give us your professional opinion of his work?"

"Well, I think it's immature. Very startling, even quite interesting at times, but essentially — adolescent."

"Then Mr. Roark cannot be called a full-fledged architect?"

"Not in the sense in which we speak of Mr. Ralston Holcombe, Mr. Guy Francon, Mr. Gordon Prescott — no. But, of course, I want to be fair. I think Mr. Roark had definite potentialities, particularly in problems of pure engineering. He could have made something of himself. I've tried to talk to him about it — I've tried to help him — I honestly did. But it was like talking to one of his pet pieces of reinforced concrete. I knew that he'd come to something like this. I wasn't surprised when I heard that a client had had to sue him at last."

"What can you tell us about Mr. Roark's attitude toward clients?"

"Well, that's the point. That's the whole point. He didn't care what the clients thought or wished, what anyone in the world thought or wished. He didn't even understand how other architects could care. He wouldn't even give you that, not even understanding, not even enough to ... respect you a little just the same. I don't see what's so wrong with trying to please people. I don't see what's wrong with wanting to be friendly and liked and popular. Why is that a crime? Why should anyone sneer at you for that, sneer all the time, all the time, day and night, not giving you a moment's peace, like the Chinese water torture, you know where they drop water on your skull drop by drop?"

People in the audience began to realize that Peter Keating was drunk. The attorney frowned; the testimony had been rehearsed; but it was getting off the rails.

"Well, now, Mr. Keating, perhaps you'd better tell us about Mr. Roark's views on architecture."

"I'll tell you, if you want to know. He thinks you should take your shoes off and kneel, when you speak of architecture. That's what he thinks. Now why should you? Why? It's a business like any other, isn't it? What's so damn sacred about it? Why do we have to be all keyed up? We're only human. We want to make a living. Why can't things be simple and easy? Why do we have to be some sort of God-damn heroes?"

"Now, now, Mr. Keating, I think we're straying slightly from the subject. We're ... "

"No, we're not. I know what I'm talking about. You do, too. They all do. Every one of them here. I'm talking about the Temple. Don't you see? Why pick a fiend to build a temple? Only a very human sort of man should be chosen to do that. A man who understands ... and forgives. A man who forgives ... That's what you go to church for — to be ... forgiven ... "

"Yes, Mr. Keating, but speaking of Mr. Roark ... "

"Well, what about Mr. Roark? He's no architect. He's no good. Why should I be afraid to say that he's no good? Why are you all afraid of him?"

"Mr. Keating, if you're not well and wish to be dismissed ... ?" Keating looked at him, as if awakening. He tried to control himself. After a while he said, his voice flat, resigned:

"No. I'm all right. I'll tell you anything you want. What is it you want me to say?"

"Will you tell us — in professional terms — your opinion of the structure known as the Stoddard Temple?"

"Yes. Sure. The Stoddard Temple ... The Stoddard Temple has an improperly articulated plan, which leads to spatial confusion. There is no balance of masses. It lacks a sense of symmetry. Its proportions are inept." He spoke in a monotone. His neck was stiff; he was making an effort not to let it drop forward. "It's out of scale. It contradicts the elementary principles of composition. The total effect is that of ... "

"Louder please, Mr. Keating."

"The total effect is that of crudeness and architectural illiteracy. It shows ... it shows no sense of structure, no instinct for beauty, no creative imagination, no ... " he closed his eyes, " ... artistic integrity ... "

"Thank you, Mr. Keating. That is all."

The attorney turned to Roark and said nervously:

"Your witness."

"No questions," said Roark.

This concluded the first day of the trial.

That evening Mallory, Heller, Mike, Enright and Lansing gathered in Roark's room. They had not consulted one another, but they all came, prompted by the same feeling. They did not talk about the trial, but there was no strain and no conscious avoidance of the subject. Roark sat on his drafting table and talked to them about the future of the plastics industry. Mallory laughed aloud suddenly, without apparent reason. "What's the matter, Steve?" Roark asked. "I just thought ... Howard, we all came here to help you, to cheer you up. But it's you who're helping us, instead. You're supporting your supporters, Howard."

That evening, Peter Keating lay half-stretched across a table in a speakeasy, one arm extending along the table top, his face on his arm.

In the next two days a succession of witnesses testified for the plaintiff. Every examination began with questions that brought out the professional achievements of the witness. The attorney gave them leads like an expert press agent. Austen Heller remarked that architects must have fought for the privilege of being called to the witness stand, since it was the grandest spree of publicity in a usually silent profession.

None of the witnesses looked at Roark. He looked at them. He listened to the testimony. He said: "No questions," to each one.

Ralston Holcombe on the stand, with flowing tie and gold-headed cane, had the appearance of a Grand Duke or a beer-garden composer. His testimony was long and scholarly, but it came down to:

"It's all nonsense. It's all a lot of childish nonsense. I can't say that I feel much sympathy for Mr. Hopton Stoddard. He should have known better. It is a scientific fact that the architectural style of the Renaissance is the only one appropriate to our age. If our best people, like Mr. Stoddard, refuse to recognize this, what can you expect from all sorts of parvenus, would-be architects and the rabble in general? It has been proved that Renaissance is the only permissible style for all churches, temples and cathedrals. What about Sir Christopher Wren? Just laugh that off. And remember the greatest religious monument of all time — St. Peter's in Rome. Are you going to improve upon St. Peter's? And if Mr. Stoddard did not specifically insist on Renaissance, he got just exactly what he deserved. It serves him jolly well right." Gordon L. Prescott wore a turtleneck sweater under a plaid coat, tweed trousers and heavy golf shoes.

"The correlation of the transcendental to the purely spatial in the building under discussion is entirely screwy," he said. "If we take the horizontal as the one-dimensional, the vertical as the two-dimensional, the diagonal as the three-dimensional, and the interpenetration of spaces as the fourth-dimensional — architecture being a fourth-dimensional art — we can see quite simply that this building is homaloidal, or — in the language of the layman — flat. The flowing life which comes from the sense of order in chaos, or, if you prefer, from unity in diversity, as well as vice versa, which is the realization of the contradiction inherent in architecture, is here absolutely absent. I am really trying to express myself as clearly as I can, but it is impossible to present a dialectic state by covering it up with an old fig leaf of logic just for the sake of the mentally lazy layman."

John Erik Snyte testified modestly and unobtrusively that he had employed Roark in his office, that Roark had been an unreliable, disloyal and unscrupulous employee, and that Roark had started his career by stealing a client from him.

On the fourth day of the trial the plaintiff's attorney called his last witness.

"Miss Dominique Francon," he announced solemnly.

Mallory gasped, but no one heard it; Mike's hand clamped down on his wrist and made him keep still.

The attorney had reserved Dominique for his climax, partly because he expected a great deal from her, and partly because he was worried; she was the only unrehearsed witness; she had refused to be coached. She had never mentioned the Stoddard Temple in her column; but he had looked up her earlier writings on Roark; and Ellsworth Toohey had advised him to call her.

Dominique stood for a moment on the elevation of the witness stand, looking slowly over the crowd. Her beauty was startling but too impersonal, as if it did not belong to her; it seemed present in the room as a separate entity. People thought of a vision that had not quite appeared, of a victim on a scaffold, of a person standing at night at the rail of an ocean liner.

"What is your name?"

"Dominique Francon."

"And your occupation, Miss Francon?"

"Newspaper woman."

"You are the author of the brilliant column 'Your House' appearing in the New York Banner!"

"I am the author of 'Your House.'"

"Your father is Guy Francon, the eminent architect?"

"Yes. My father was asked to come here to testify. He refused. He said he did not care for a building such as the Stoddard Temple, but he did not think that we were behaving like gentlemen."

"Well, now, Miss Francon, shall we confine our answers to our questions? We are indeed fortunate to have you with us, since you are our only woman witness, and women have always had the purest sense of religious faith. Being, in addition, an outstanding authority on architecture, you are eminently qualified to give us what I shall call, with all deference, the feminine angle on this case. Will you tell us in your own words what you think of the Stoddard Temple?"

"I think that Mr. Stoddard has made a mistake. There would have been no doubt about the justice of his case if he had sued, not for alteration costs, but for demolition costs."

The attorney looked relieved. "Will you explain your reasons, Miss Francon?"

"You have heard them from every witness at this trial."

"Then I take it that you agree with the preceding testimony?"

"Completely. Even more completely than the persons who testified. They were very convincing witnesses."

"Will you ... clarify that, Miss Francon? Just what do you mean?"

"What Mr. Toohey said: that this temple is a threat to all of us."

"Oh, I see."

"Mr. Toohey understood the issue so well. Shall I clarify it — in my own words?"

"By all means."

"Howard Roark built a temple to the human spirit. He saw man as strong, proud, clean, wise and fearless. He saw man as a heroic being. And he built a temple to that. A temple is a place where man is to experience exaltation. He thought that exaltation comes from the consciousness of being guiltless, of seeing the truth and achieving it, of living up to one's highest possibility, of knowing no shame and having no cause for shame, of being able to stand naked in full sunlight. He thought that exaltation means joy and that joy is man's birthright. He thought that a place built as a setting for man is a sacred place. That is what Howard Roark thought of man and of exaltation. But Ellsworth Toohey said that this temple was a monument to a profound hatred of humanity. Ellsworth Toohey said that the essence of exaltation was to be scared out of your wits, to fall down and to grovel. Ellsworth Toohey said that man's highest act was to realize his own worthlessness and to beg forgiveness. Ellsworth Toohey said it was depraved not to take for granted that man is something which needs to be forgiven. Ellsworth Toohey saw that this building was of man and of the earth — and Ellsworth Toohey said that this building had its belly in the mud. To glorify man, said Ellsworth Toohey, was to glorify the gross pleasure of the flesh, for the realm of the spirit is beyond the grasp of man. To enter that realm, said Ellsworth Toohey, man must come as a beggar, on his knees. Ellsworth Toohey is a lover of mankind."

"Miss Francon, we are not really discussing Mr. Toohey, so if you will confine yourself to ... "

"I do not condemn Ellsworth Toohey. I condemn Howard Roark. A building, they say, must be part of its site. In what kind of world did Roark build his temple? For what kind of men? Look around you. Can you see a shrine becoming sacred by serving as a setting for Mr. Hopton Stoddard? For Mr. Ralston Holcombe? For Mr. Peter Keating? When you look at them all, do you hate Ellsworth Toohey — or do you damn Howard Roark for the unspeakable indignity which he did commit? Ellsworth Toohey is right, that temple is a sacrilege, though not in the sense he meant. I think Mr. Toohey knows that, however. When you see a man casting pearls without getting even a pork chop in return — it is not against the swine that you feel indignation. It is against the man who valued his pearls so little that he was willing to fling them into the muck and to let them become the occasion for a whole concert of grunting, transcribed by the court stenographer."

"Miss Francon, I hardly think that this line of testimony is relevant or admissible ... "

"The witness must be allowed to testify," the judge declared unexpectedly. He had been bored and he liked to watch Dominique's figure. Besides, he knew that the audience was enjoying it, in the sheer excitement of scandal, even though their sympathies were with Hopton Stoddard.

"Your Honor, some misunderstanding seems to have occurred," said the attorney. "Miss Francon, for whom are you testifying? For Mr. Roark or Mr. Stoddard?"

"For Mr. Stoddard, of course. I am stating the reasons why Mr. Stoddard should win this case. I have sworn to tell the truth."

"Proceed," said the judge.

"All the witnesses have told the truth. But not the whole truth. I am merely filling in the omissions. They spoke of a threat and of hatred. They were right. The Stoddard Temple is a threat to many things. If it were allowed to exist, nobody would dare to look at himself in the mirror. And that is a cruel thing to do to men. Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don't ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul. Well, they know best. They must have their reasons. They won't say, of course, that they hate you. They will say that you hate them. It's near enough, I suppose. They know the emotion involved. Such are men as they are. So what is the use of being a martyr to the impossible? What is the use of building for a world that does not exist?"

"Your Honor, I don't see what possible bearing this can have on ... "

"I am proving your case for you. I am proving why you must go with Ellsworth Toohey, as you will anyway. The Stoddard Temple must be destroyed. Not to save men from it, but to save it from men. What's the difference, however? Mr. Stoddard wins. I am in full agreement with everything that's being done here, except for one point. I didn't think we should be allowed to get away with that point. Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are committing an act of virtue. Let us say that we are moles and we object to mountain peaks. Or, perhaps, that we are lemmings, the animals who cannot help swimming out to self-destruction. I realize fully that at this moment I am as futile as Howard Roark. This is my Stoddard Temple — my first and my last." She inclined her head to the judge. "That is all, Your Honor."

"Your witness," the attorney snapped to Roark.

"No questions," said Roark.

Dominique left the stand.

The attorney bowed to the bench and said: "The plaintiff rests."

The judge turned to Roark and made a vague gesture, inviting him to proceed.

Roark got up and walked to the bench, the brown envelope in hand. He took out of the envelope ten photographs of the Stoddard Temple and laid them on the judge's desk. He said:

"The defense rests."

13.

HOPTON STODDARD won the suit.

Ellsworth Toohey wrote in his column: "Mr. Roark pulled a Phryne in court and didn't get away with it. We never believed that story in the first place."

Roark was instructed to pay the costs of the Temple's alterations. He said that he would not appeal the case. Hopton Stoddard announced that the Temple would be remodeled into the Hopton Stoddard Home for Subnormal Children.

On the day after the end of the trial Alvah Scarret gasped when he glanced at the proofs of "Your House" delivered to his desk: the column contained most of Dominique's testimony in court. Her testimony had been quoted in the newspaper accounts of the case but only in harmless excerpts. Alvah Scarret hurried to Dominique's office.

"Darling, darling, darling," he said, "we can't print that."

She looked at him blankly and said nothing.

"Dominique, sweetheart, be reasonable. Quite apart from some of the language you use and some of your utterly unprintable ideas, you know very well the stand this paper has taken on the case. You know the campaign we've conducted. You've read my editorial this morning — 'A Victory for Decency.' We can't have one writer running against our whole policy."

"You'll have to print it."

"But, sweetheart ... "

"Or I'll have to quit."

"Oh, go on, go on, go on, don't be silly. Now don't get ridiculous. You know better than that. We can't get along without you. We can't ... "

"You'll have to choose, Alvah."

Scarret knew that he would get hell from Gail Wynand if he printed the thing, and might get hell if he lost Dominique Francon whose column was popular. Wynand had not returned from his cruise. Scarret cabled him in Bali, explaining the situation.

Within a few hours Scarret received an answer. It was in Wynand's private code. Translated it read FIRE THE BITCH. G.W.

Scarret stared at the cable, crushed. It was an order that allowed no alternative, even if Dominique surrendered. He hoped she would resign. He could not face the thought of having to fire her.

Through an office boy whom he had recommended for the job, Toohey obtained the decoded copy of Wynand's cable. He put it in his pocket and went to Dominique's office. He had not seen her since the trial. He found her engaged in emptying the drawers of her desk.

"Hello," he said curtly. "What are you doing?"

"Waiting to hear from Alvah Scarret."

"Meaning?"

"Waiting to hear whether I'll have to resign."

"Feel like talking about the trial?"

"No."

"I do. I think I owe you the courtesy of admitting that you've done what no one has ever done before: you proved me wrong." He spoke coldly; his face looked flat; his eyes had no trace of kindness. "I had not expected you to do what you did on the stand. It was a scurvy trick. Though up to your usual standard. I simply miscalculated the direction of your malice. However, you did have the good sense to admit that your act was futile. Of course, you made your point. And mine. As a token of appreciation, I have a present for you." He laid the cable on her desk. She read it and stood holding it in her hand. "You can't even resign, my dear," he said. "You can't make that sacrifice to your pearl-casting hero. Remembering that you attach such great importance to not being beaten except by your own hand, I thought you would enjoy this."

She folded the cable and slipped it into her purse.

"Thank you, Ellsworth."

"If you're going to fight me, my dear, it will take more than speeches."

"Haven't I always?"

"Yes. Yes, of course you have. Quite right. You're correcting me again. You have always fought me — and the only time you broke down and screamed for mercy was on that witness stand."

"That's right."

"That's where I miscalculated."

"Yes."

He bowed formally and left the room.

She made a package of the things she wanted to take home. Then she went to Scarret's office. She showed him the cable in her hand, but she did not give it to him.

"Okay, Alvah," she said.

"Dominique, I couldn't help it, I couldn't help it, it was — How the hell did you get that?"

"It's all right, Alvah. No, I won't give it back to you. I want to keep it." She put the cable back in her bag. "Mail me my check and anything else that has to be discussed."

"You ... you were going to resign anyway, weren't you?"

"Yes, I was. But I like it better — being fired."

"Dominique, if you knew how awful I feel about it. I can't believe it. I simply can't believe it."

"So you people made a martyr out of me, after all. And that is the one thing I've tried all my life not to be. It's so graceless, being a martyr. It's honoring your adversaries too much. But I'll tell you this, Alvah — I'll tell it to you, because I couldn't find a less appropriate person to hear it: nothing that you do to me — or to him — will be worse than what I'll do myself. If you think I can't take the Stoddard Temple, wait till you see what I can take."

On an evening three days after the trial Ellsworth Toohey sat in his room, listening to the radio. He did not feel like working and he allowed himself a rest, relaxing luxuriously in an armchair, letting his fingers follow the rhythm of a complicated symphony. He heard a knock at his door. "Co-ome in," he drawled.

Catherine came in. She glanced at the radio by way of apology for her entrance.

"I knew you weren't working, Uncle Ellsworth. I want to speak to you."

She stood slumped, her body thin and curveless. She wore a skirt of expensive tweed, unpressed. She had smeared some makeup on her face; the skin showed lifeless under the patches of powder. At twenty-six she looked like a woman trying to hide the fact of being over thirty.

In the last few years, with her uncle's help, she had become an able social worker. She held a paid job in a settlement house, she had a small bank account of her own; she took her friends out to lunch, older women of her profession, and they talked about the problems of unwed mothers, self-expression for the children of the poor, and the evils of industrial corporations.

In the last few years Toohey seemed to have forgotten her existence. But he knew that she was enormously aware of him in her silent, self-effacing way. He was seldom first to speak to her. But she came to him continuously for minor advice. She was like a small motor running on his energy, and she had to stop for refueling once in a while. She would not go to the theater without consulting him about the play. She would not attend a lecture course without asking his opinion. Once she developed a friendship with a girl who was intelligent, capable, gay and loved the poor, though a social worker. Toohey did not approve of the girl. Catherine dropped her.

When she needed advice, she asked for it briefly, in passing, anxious not to delay him: between the courses of a meal, at the elevator door on his way out, in the living room when some important broadcast stopped for station identification. She made it a point to show that she would presume to claim nothing but the waste scraps of his time.

So Toohey looked at her, surprised, when she entered his study. He said:

"Certainly, pet. I'm not busy. I'm never too busy for you, anyway. Turn the thing down a bit, will you?"

She softened the volume of the radio, and she slumped down in an armchair facing him. Her movements were awkward and contradictory, like an adolescent's: she had lost the habit of moving with assurance, and yet, at times, a gesture, a jerk of her head, would show a dry, overbearing impatience which she was beginning to develop.

She looked at her uncle. Behind her glasses, her eyes were still and tense, but unrevealing. She said:

"What have you been doing, Uncle Ellsworth? I saw something in the papers about winning some big lawsuit that you were connected with. I was glad. I haven't read the papers for months. I've been so busy ... No, that's not quite true. I've had the time, but when I came home I just couldn't make myself do anything, I just fell in bed and went to sleep. Uncle Ellsworth, do people sleep a lot because they're tired or because they want to escape from something?"

"Now, my dear, this doesn't sound like you at all. None of it." She shook her head helplessly: "I know."

"What is the matter?"

She said, looking at the toes of her shoes, her lips moving with effort:

"I guess I'm no good, Uncle Ellsworth." She raised her eyes to him. "I'm so terribly unhappy."

He looked at her silently, his face earnest, his eyes gentle. She whispered:

"You understand?" He nodded. "You're not angry at me? You don't despise me?"

"My dear, how could I?"

"I didn't want to say it. Not even to myself. It's not just tonight, it's for a long time back. Just let me say everything, don't be shocked, I've got to tell it. It's like going to confession as I used to — oh, don't think I'm returning to that, I know religion is only a ... a device of class exploitation, don't think I'd let you down after you explained it all so well. I don't miss going to church. But it's just — it's just that I've got to have somebody listen."

"Katie, darling, first of all, why are you so frightened? You mustn't be. Certainly not of speaking to me. Just relax, be yourself and tell me what happened."

She looked at him gratefully. "You're ... so sensitive, Uncle Ellsworth. That's one thing I didn't want to say, but you guessed. I am frightened. Because — well, you see, you just said, be yourself. And what I'm afraid of most is of being myself. Because I'm vicious."

He laughed, not offensively, but warmly, the sound destroying her statement. But she did not smile.

"No, Uncle Ellsworth, it's true. I'll try to explain. You see, always, since I was a child, I wanted to do right. I used to think everybody did, but now I don't think so. Some people try their best, even if they do make mistakes, and others just don't care. I've always cared. I took it very seriously. Of course I knew that I'm not a brilliant person and that it's a very big subject, good and evil. But I felt that whatever is the good — as much as it would be possible for me to know — I would do my honest best to live up to it. Which is all anybody can try, isn't it? This probably sounds terribly childish to you."

"No, Katie, it doesn't. Go on, my dear."

"Well, to begin with, I knew that it was evil to be selfish. That much I was sure of. So I tried never to demand anything for myself. When Peter would disappear for months ... No, I don't think you approve of that."

"Of what, my dear?"

"Of Peter and me. So I won't talk about that. It's not important anyway. Well, you can see why I was so happy when I came to live with you. You're as close to the ideal of unselfishness as anyone can be. I tried to follow you the best I could. That's how I chose the work I'm doing. You never actually said that I should choose it, but I came to feel that you thought so. Don't ask me how I came to feel it — it was nothing tangible, just little things you said. I felt very confident when I started. I knew that unhappiness comes from selfishness, and that one can find true happiness only in dedicating oneself to others. You said that. So many people have said that. Why, all the greatest men in history have been saying that for centuries."

"And?"

"Well, look at me."

His face remained motionless for a moment, then he smiled gaily and said:

"What's wrong with you, pet? Apart from the fact that your stockings don't match and that you could be more careful about your make-up?"

"Don't laugh, Uncle Ellsworth. Please don't laugh. I know you say we must be able to laugh at everything, particularly at ourselves. Only — I can't."

"I won't laugh, Katie. But what is the matter?"

"I'm unhappy. I'm unhappy in such a horrible, nasty, undignified way. In a way that seems ... unclean. And dishonest. I go for days, afraid to think, to look at myself. And that's wrong. It's ... becoming a hypocrite. I always wanted to be honest with myself. But I'm not, I'm not, I'm not!"

"Hold on, my dear. Don't shout. The neighbors will hear you."

She brushed the back of her hand against her forehead. She shook her head. She whispered:

"I'm sorry ... I'll be all right ... "

"Just why are you unhappy, my dear?"

"I don't know. I can't understand it. For instance, it was I who arranged to have the classes in prenatal care down at the Clifford House — it was my idea — I raised the money — I found the teacher. The classes are doing very well. I tell myself that I should be happy about it. But I'm not. It doesn't seem to make any difference to me. I sit down and I tell myself: It was you who arranged to have Marie Gonzales' baby adopted into a nice family — now, be happy. But I'm not. I feel nothing. When I'm honest with myself, I know that the only emotion I've felt for years is being tired. Not physically tired. Just tired. It's as if ... as if there were nobody there to feel any more."

She took off her glasses, as if the double barrier of her glasses and his prevented her from reaching him. She spoke, her voice lower, the words coming with greater effort:

"But that's not all. There's something much worse. It's doing something horrible to me. I'm beginning to hate people, Uncle Ellsworth. I'm beginning to be cruel and mean and petty in a way I've never been before. I expect people to be grateful to me. I ... I demand gratitude. I find myself pleased when slum people bow and scrape and fawn over me. I find myself liking only those who are servile. Once ... once I told a woman that she didn't appreciate what people like us did for trash like her. I cried for hours afterward, I was so ashamed. I begin to resent it when people argue with me. I feel that they have no right to minds of their own, that I know best, that I'm the final authority for them. There was a girl we were worried about, because she was running around with a very handsome boy who had a bad reputation, I tortured her for weeks about it, telling her how he'd get her in trouble and that she should drop him. Well, they got married and they're the happiest couple in the district. Do you think I'm glad? No, I'm furious and I'm barely civil to the girl when I meet her. Then there was a girl who needed a job desperately — it was really a ghastly situation in her home, and I promised that I'd get her one. Before I could find it, she got a good job all by herself. I wasn't pleased. I was sore as hell that somebody got out of a bad hole without my help. Yesterday, I was speaking to a boy who wanted to go to college and I was discouraging him, telling him to get a good job, instead. I was quite angry, too. And suddenly I realized that it was because I had wanted so much to go to college — you remember, you wouldn't let me — and so I wasn't going to let that kid do it either ... Uncle Ellsworth, don't you see? I'm becoming selfish. I'm becoming selfish in a way that's much more horrible than if I were some petty chiseler pinching pennies off these people's wages in a sweatshop!"

He asked quietly:

"Is that all?"

She closed her eyes, and then she said, looking down at her hands:

"Yes ... except that I'm not the only one who's like that. A lot of them are, most of the women I work with ... I don't know how they got that way ... I don't know how it happened to me ... I used to feel happy when I helped somebody. I remember once — I had lunch with Peter that day — and on my way back I saw an old organ-grinder and I gave him five dollars I had in my bag. It was all the money I had; I'd saved it to buy a bottle of 'Christmas Night,' I wanted 'Christmas Night' very badly, but afterward every time I thought of that organ-grinder I was happy ... I saw Peter often in those days ... I'd come home after seeing him and I'd want to kiss every ragged kid on our block ... I think I hate the poor now ... I think all the other women do, too ... But the poor don't hate us, as they should. They only despise us ... You know, it's funny: it's the masters who despise the slaves, and the slaves who hate the masters. I don't know who is which. Maybe it doesn't fit here. Maybe it does. I don't know ... "

She raised her head with a last spurt of rebellion.

"Don't you see what it is that I must understand? Why is it that I set out honestly to do what I thought was right and it's making me rotten? I think it's probably because I'm vicious by nature and incapable of leading a good life. That seems to be the only explanation. But ... but sometimes I think it doesn't make sense that a human being is completely sincere in good will and yet the good is not for him to achieve. I can't be as rotten as that. But ... but I've given up everything, I have no selfish desire left, I have nothing of my own — and I'm miserable. And so are the other women like me. And I don't know a single selfless person in the world who's happy — except you."

She dropped her head and she did not raise it again; she seemed indifferent even to the answer she was seeking.

"Katie," he said softly, reproachfully, "Katie darling."

She waited silently.

"Do you really want me to tell you the answer?" She nodded. "Because, you know, you've given the answer yourself, in the things you said." She lifted her eyes blankly. "What have you been talking about? What have you been complaining about? About the fact that you are unhappy. About Katie Halsey and nothing else. It was the most egotistical speech I've ever heard in my life."

She blinked attentively, like a schoolchild disturbed by a difficult lesson.

"Don't you see how selfish you have been? You chose a noble career, not for the good you could accomplish, but for the personal happiness you expected to find in it."

"But I really wanted to help people."

"Because you thought you'd be good and virtuous doing it."

"Why — yes. Because I thought it was right. Is it vicious to want to do right?"

"Yes, if it's your chief concern. Don't you see how egotistical it is? To hell with everybody so long as I'm virtuous."

"But if you have no ... no self-respect, how can you be anything?"

"Why must you be anything?"

She spread her hands out, bewildered.

"If your first concern is for what you are or think or feel or have or haven't got — you're still a common egotist."

"But I can't jump out of my own body."

"No. But you can jump out of your narrow soul."

"You mean, I must want to be unhappy?"

"No. You must stop wanting anything. You must forget how important Miss Catherine Halsey is. Because, you see, she isn't. Men are important only in relation to other men, in their usefulness, in the service they render. Unless you understand that completely, you can expect nothing but one form of misery or another. Why make such a cosmic tragedy out of the fact that you've found yourself feeling cruel toward people? So what? It's just growing pains. One can't jump from a state of animal brutality into a state of spiritual living without certain transitions. And some of them may seem evil. A beautiful woman is usually a gawky adolescent first. All growth demands destruction. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You must be willing to suffer, to be cruel, to be dishonest, to be unclean — anything, my dear, anything to kill the most stubborn of roots, the ego. And only when it is dead, when you care no longer, when you have lost your identity and forgotten the name of your soul — only then will you know the kind of happiness I spoke about, and the gates of spiritual grandeur will fall open before you."

"But, Uncle Ellsworth," she whispered, "when the gates fall open, who is it that's going to enter?"

He laughed aloud, crisply. It sounded like a laugh of appreciation. "My dear," he said, "I never thought you could surprise me."

Then his face became earnest again.

"It was a smart crack, Katie, but you know, I hope, that it was only a smart crack?"

"Yes," she said uncertainly, "I suppose so. Still ... "

"We can't be too literal when we deal in abstractions. Of course it's you who'll enter. You won't have lost your identity — you will merely have acquired a broader one, an identity that will be part of everybody else and of the whole universe."

"How? In what way? Part of what?"

"Now you see how difficult it is to discuss these things when our entire language is the language of individualism, with all its terms and superstitions. 'Identity' — it's an illusion, you know. But you can't build a new house out of crumbling old bricks. You can't expect to understand me completely through the medium of present-day conceptions. We are poisoned by the superstition of the ego. We cannot know what will be right or wrong in a selfless society, nor what we'll feel, nor in what manner. We must destroy the ego first. That is why the mind is so unreliable. We must not think. We must believe. Believe, Katie, even if your mind objects. Don't think. Believe. Trust your heart, not your brain. Don't think. Feel. Believe."

She sat still, composed, but somehow she looked like something run over by a tank. She whispered obediently:

"Yes, Uncle Ellsworth ... I ... I didn't think of it that way. I mean I always thought that I must think ... But you're right, that is, if right is the word I mean, if there is a word ... Yes, I will believe ... I'll try to understand ... No, not to understand. To feel. To believe, I mean ... Only I'm so weak ... I always feel so small after talking to you ... I suppose I was right in a way — I am worthless ... but it doesn't matter ... it doesn't matter ... "

When the doorbell rang on the following evening Toohey went to open the door himself.

He smiled when he admitted Peter Keating. After the trial he had expected Keating to come to him; he knew that Keating would need to come. But he had expected him sooner.

Keating walked in uncertainly. His hands seemed too heavy for his wrists. His eyes were puffed, and the skin of his face looked slack.

"Hello, Peter," said Toohey brightly. "Want to see me? Come right in. Just your luck. I have the whole evening free."

"No," said Keating. "I want to see Katie."

He was not looking at Toohey and he did not see the expression behind Toohey's glasses.

"Katie? But of course!" said Toohey gaily. "You know, you've never come here to call on Katie, so it didn't occur to me, but ... Go right in, I believe she's home. This way — you don't know her room? — second door."

Keating shuffled heavily down the hall, knocked on Catherine's door and went in when she answered. Toohey stood looking after him, his face thoughtful.

Catherine jumped to her feet when she saw her guest. She stood stupidly, incredulously for a moment, then she dashed to her bed to snatch a girdle she had left lying there and stuff it hurriedly under the pillow. Then she jerked off her glasses, closed her whole fist over them, and slipped them into her pocket. She wondered which would be worse: to remain as she was or to sit down at her dressing table and make up her face in his presence.

She had not seen Keating for six months. In the last three years, they had met occasionally, at long intervals, they had had a few luncheons together, a few dinners, they had gone to the movies twice. They had always met in a public place. Since the beginning of his acquaintance with Toohey, Keating would not come to see her at her home. When they met, they talked as if nothing had changed. But they had not spoken of marriage for a long time. "Hello, Katie," said Keating softly. "I didn't know you wore glasses now."

"It's just ... it's only for reading ... I ... Hello, Peter ... I guess I look terrible tonight ... I'm glad to see you, Peter ... "

He sat down heavily, his hat in his hand, his overcoat on. She stood smiling helplessly. Then she made a vague, circular motion with her hands and asked:

"Is it just for a little while or ... or do you want to take your coat off?"

"No, it's not just for a little while." He got up, threw his coat and hat on the bed, then he smiled for the first time and asked: "Or are you busy and want to throw me out?"

She pressed the heels of her hands against her eye sockets, and dropped her hands again quickly; she had to meet him as she had always met him, she had to sound light and normal: "No, no, Fin not busy at all."

He sat down and stretched out his arm in silent invitation. She came to him promptly, she put her hand in his, and he pulled her down to the arm of his chair.

The lamplight fell on him, and she had recovered enough to notice the appearance of his face.

"Peter," she gasped, "what have you been doing to yourself? You look awful."

"Drinking."

"Not ... like that!"

"Like that. But it's over now."

"What was it?"

"I wanted to see you, Katie. I wanted to see you."

"Darling ... what have they done to you?"

"Nobody's done anything to me. I'm all right now. I'm all right. Because I came here ... Katie, have you ever heard of Hopton Stoddard?"

"Stoddard? ... I don't know. I've seen the name somewhere."

"Well, never mind, it doesn't matter. I was only thinking how strange it is. You see, Stoddard's an old bastard who just couldn't take his own rottenness any more, so to make up for it he built a big present to the city. But when I ... when I couldn't take any more, I felt that the only way I could make up for it was by doing the thing I really wanted to do most — by coming here."

"When you couldn't take — what, Peter?"

"I've done something very dirty, Katie. I'll tell you about it some day, but not now ... Look will you say that you forgive me — without asking what it is? I'll think ... I'll think that I've been forgiven by someone who can never forgive me. Someone who can't be hurt and so can't forgive — but that makes it worse for me."

She did not seem perplexed. She said earnestly:

"I forgive you, Peter."

He nodded his head slowly several times and said:

"Thank you."

Then she pressed her head to his and she whispered:

"You've gone through hell, haven't you?"

"Yes. But it's all right now."

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Then he did not think of the Stoddard Temple any longer, and she did not think of good and evil. They did not need to; they felt too clean.

"Katie, why haven't we married?"

"I don't know," she said. And added hastily, saying it only because her heart was pounding, because she could not remain silent and because she felt called upon not to take advantage of him: "I guess it's because we knew we don't have to hurry,"

"But we do. If we're not too late already."

"Peter, you ... you're not proposing to me again?"

"Don't look stunned, Katie. If you do, I'll know that you've doubted it all these years. And I couldn't stand to think that just now. That's what I came here to tell you tonight. We're going to get married. We're going to get married right away."

"Yes, Peter."

"We don't need announcements, dates, preparations, guests, any of it. We've let one of those things or another stop us every time. I honestly don't know just how it happened that we've let it all drift like that ... We won't say anything to anyone. We'll just slip out of town and get married. We'll announce and explain afterward, if anyone wants explanations. And that means your uncle, and my mother, and everybody."

"Yes, Peter."

"Quit your damn job tomorrow. I'll make arrangements at the office to take a month off. Guy will be sore as hell — I'll enjoy that. Get your things ready — you won't need much — don't bother about the makeup, by the way — did you say you looked terrible tonight? — you've never looked lovelier. I'll be here at nine o'clock in the morning, day after tomorrow. You must be ready to start then."

"Yes, Peter."

After he had gone, she lay on her bed, sobbing aloud, without restraint, without dignity, without a care in the world.

Ellsworth Toohey had left the door of his study open. He had seen Keating pass by the door without noticing it and go out. Then he heard the sound of Catherine's sobs. He walked to her room and entered without knocking. He asked:

"What's the matter, my dear? Has Peter done something to hurt you?"

She half lifted herself on the bed, she looked at him, throwing her hair back off her face, sobbing exultantly. She said without thinking the first thing she felt like saying. She said something which she did not understand, but he did: "I'm not afraid of you, Uncle Ellsworth!"

14.

"WHO?" gasped Keating.

"Miss Dominique Francon," the maid repeated.

"You're drunk, you damn fool!"

"Mr. Keating! ... "

He was on his feet, he shoved her out of the way, he flew into the living room, and saw Dominique Francon standing there, in his apartment.

"Hello, Peter."

"Dominique! ... Dominique, how come?" In his anger, apprehension, curiosity and flattered pleasure, his first conscious thought was gratitude to God that his mother was not at home.

"I phoned your office. They said you had gone home."

"I'm so delighted, so pleasantly sur ... Oh, hell, Dominique, what's the use? I always try to be correct with you and you always see through it so well that it's perfectly pointless. So I won't play the poised host. You know that I'm knocked silly and that your coming here isn't natural and anything I say will probably be wrong."

"Yes, that's better, Peter."

He noticed that he still held a key in his hand and he slipped it into his pocket; he had been packing a suitcase for his wedding trip of tomorrow. He glanced at the room and noted angrily how vulgar his Victorian furniture looked beside the elegance of Dominique's figure. She wore a gray suit, a black fur jacket with a collar raised to her cheeks, and a hat slanting down. She did not look as she had looked on the witness stand, nor as he remembered her at dinner parties. He thought suddenly of that moment, years ago, when he stood on the stair landing outside Guy Francon's office and wished never to see Dominique again. She was what she had been then: a stranger who frightened him by the crystal emptiness of her face.

"Well, sit down, Dominique. Take your coat off."

"No, I shan't stay long. Since we're not pretending anything today, shall I tell you what I came for — or do you want some polite conversation first?"

"No, I don't want polite conversation."

"All right. Will you marry me, Peter?"

He stood very still; then he sat down heavily — because he knew she meant it.

"If you want to marry me," she went on in the same precise, impersonal voice, "you must do it right now. My car is downstairs. We drive to Connecticut and we come back. It will take about three hours."

"Dominique ... " He didn't want to move his lips beyond the effort of her name. He wanted to think that he was paralyzed. He knew that he was violently alive, that he was forcing the stupor into his muscles and into his mind, because he wished to escape the responsibility of consciousness.

"We're not pretending, Peter. Usually, people discuss their reasons and their feelings first, then make the practical arrangements. With us, this is the only way. If I offered it to you in any other form, I'd be cheating you. It must be like this. No questions, no conditions, no explanations. What we don't say answers itself. By not being said. There is nothing for you to ponder — only whether you want to do it or not."

"Dominique," he spoke with the concentration he used when he walked down a naked girder in an unfinished building, "I understand only this much: I understand that I must try to imitate you, not to discuss it, not to talk, just answer."

"Yes."

"Only — I can't — quite."

"This is one time, Peter, when there are no protections. Nothing to hide behind. Not even words."

"If you'd just say one thing ... "

"No."

"If you'd give me time ... "

"No. Either we go downstairs together now or we forget it."

"You mustn't resent it if I ... You've never allowed me to hope that you could ... that you ... no, no, I won't say it ... but what can you expect me to think? I'm here, alone, and ... "

"And I'm the only one present to give you advice. My advice is to refuse. I'm honest with you, Peter. But I won't help you by withdrawing the offer. You would prefer not to have had the chance of marrying me. But you have the chance. Now. The choice will be yours."

Then he could not hold on to his dignity any longer; he let his head drop, he pressed his fist to his forehead. "Dominique — why?"

"You know the reasons. I told them to you once, long ago. If you haven't the courage to think of them, don't expect me to repeat them."

He sat still, his head down. Then he said: "Dominique, two people like you and me getting married, it's almost a front-page event."

"Yes."

"Wouldn't it be better to do it properly, with an announcement and a real wedding ceremony?"

"I'm strong, Peter, but I'm not that strong. You can have your receptions and your publicity afterward."

"You don't want me to say anything now, except yes or no?"

"That's all."

He sat looking up at her for a long time. Her glance was on his eyes, but it had no more reality than the glance of a portrait. He felt alone in the room. She stood, patient, waiting, granting him nothing, not even the kindness of prompting him to hurry. "All right, Dominique. Yes," he said at last. She inclined her head gravely in acquiescence. He stood up. "I'll get my coat," he said. "Do you want to take your car?"

"Yes."

"It's an open car, isn't it? Should I wear my fur coat? "No. Take a warm muffler, though. There's a little wind."

"No luggage? We're coming right back to the city?"

"We're coming right back."

He left the door to the hall open, and she saw him putting on his coat, throwing a muffler around his throat, with the gesture of flinging a cape over his shoulder. He stepped to the door of the living room, hat in hand, and invited her to go, with a silent movement of his head. In the hall outside he pressed the button of the elevator and he stepped back to let her enter first. He was precise, sure of himself, without joy, without emotion. He seemed more coldly masculine than he had ever been before.

He took her elbow firmly, protectively, to cross the street where she had left her car. He opened the car's door, let her slide behind the wheel and got in silently beside her. She leaned over across him and adjusted the glass wind screen on his side. She said: "If it's not right, fix it any way you want when we start moving, so it won't be too cold for you." He said: "Get to the Grand Concourse, fewer lights there." She put her handbag down on his lap while she took the wheel and started the car. There was suddenly no antagonism between them, but a quiet, hopeless feeling of comradeship, as if they were victims of the same impersonal disaster, who had to help each other.

She drove fast, as a matter of habit, an even speed without a sense of haste. They sat silently to the level drone of the motor, and they sat patiently, without shifting the positions of their bodies, when the car stopped for a light. They seemed caught in a single streak of motion, an imperative direction like the flight of a bullet that could not be stopped on its course. There was a first hint of twilight in the streets of the city. The pavements looked yellow. The shops were still open. A movie theater had lighted its sign, and the red bulbs whirled jerkily, sucking the last daylight out of the air, making the street look darker.

Peter Keating felt no need of speech. He did not seem to be Peter Keating any longer. He did not ask for warmth and he did not ask for pity. He asked nothing. She thought of that once, and she glanced at him, a glance of appreciation that was almost gentle. He met her eyes steadily; she saw understanding, but no comment. It was as if his glance said: "Of course," nothing else.

They were out of the city, with a cold brown road flying to meet them, when he said:

"The traffic cops are bad around here. Got your press card with you, just in case?"

"I'm not the press any longer."

"You're not what?"

"I'm not a newspaper woman any more."

"You quit your job?"

"No, I was fired."

"What are you talking about?"

"Where have you been the last few days? I thought everybody knew it."

"Sorry. I didn't follow things very well the last few days."

Miles later, she said: "Give me a cigarette. In my bag." He opened her bag, and he saw her cigarette case, her compact, her lipstick, her comb, a folded handkerchief too white to touch, smelling faintly of her perfume. Somewhere within him he thought that this was almost like unbuttoning her blouse. But most of him was not conscious of the thought nor of the intimate proprietorship with which he opened the bag. He took a cigarette from her case, lighted it and put it from his lips to hers. "Thanks," she said. He lighted one for himself and closed the bag.

When they reached Greenwich, it was he who made the inquiries, told her where to drive, at what block to turn, and said, "Here it is," when they pulled up in front of the judge's house. He got out first and helped her out of the car. He pressed the button of the doorbell.

They were married in a living room that displayed armchairs of faded tapestry, blue and purple, and a lamp with a fringe of glass beads. The witnesses were the judge's wife and someone from next door named Chuck, who had been interrupted at some household task and smelled faintly of Clorox.

Then they came back to their car and Keating asked: "Want me to drive if you're tired?" She said: "No, I'll drive."

The road to the city cut through brown fields where every rise in the ground had a shade of tired red on the side facing west. There was a purple haze eating away the edges of the fields, and a motionless streak of fire in the sky. A few cars came toward them as brown shapes, still visible; others had their lights on, two disquieting spots of yellow.

Keating watched the road; it looked narrow, a small dash in the middle of the windshield, framed by earth and hills, all of it held within the rectangle of glass before him. But the road spread as the windshield flew forward. The road filled the glass, it ran over the edges, it tore apart to let them pass, streaming in two gray bands on either side of the car. He thought it was a race and he waited to see the windshield win, to see the car hurtle into that small dash before it had time to stretch.

"Where are we going to live now, at first?" he asked. "Your place or mine?"

"Yours, of course."

"I'd rather move to yours."

"No. I'm closing my place."

"You can't possibly like my apartment."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. It doesn't fit you."

"I'll like it."

They were silent for a while, then he asked: "How are we going to announce this now?"

"In any way you wish. I'll leave it up to you."

It was growing darker and she switched on the car's headlights. He watched the small blurs of traffic signs, low by the side of the road, springing suddenly into life as they approached, spelling out: "Left turn,"

"Crossing ahead," in dots of light that seemed conscious, malevolent, winking.

They drove silently, but there was no bond in their silence now; they were not walking together toward disaster; the disaster had come; their courage did not matter any longer.

He felt disturbed and uncertain as he always felt in the presence of Dominique Francon.

He half turned to look at her. She kept her eyes on the road. Her profile in the cold wind was serene and remote and lovely in a way that was hard to bear. He looked at her gloved hands resting firmly, one on each side of the wheel. He looked down at her slender foot on the accelerator, then his eyes rose up the line of her leg. His glance remained on the narrow triangle of her tight gray skirt. He realized suddenly that he had a right to think what he was thinking.

For the first time this implication of marriage occurred to him fully and consciously. Then he knew that he had always wanted this woman, that it was the kind of feeling he would have for a whore, only lasting and hopeless and vicious. My wife, he thought for the first time, without a trace of respect in the word. He felt so violent a desire that had it been summer he would have ordered her to drive into the first side lane and he would have taken her there.

He slipped his arm along the back of the seat and encircled her shoulders, his fingers barely touching her. She did not move, resist or turn to look at him. He pulled his arm away, and he sat staring straight ahead.

"Mrs. Keating," he said flatly, not addressing her, just as a statement of fact.

"Mrs. Peter Keating," she said.

When they stopped in front of his apartment house, he got out and held the door for her, but she remained sitting behind the wheel.

"Good night, Peter," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She added, before the expression of his face had turned into an obscene swearword: "I'll send my things over tomorrow and we'll discuss everything then. Everything will begin tomorrow, Peter."

"Where are you going?"

"I have things to settle."

"But what will I tell people tonight?"

"Anything you wish, if at all."

She swung the car into the traffic and drove away.

When she entered Roark's room, that evening, he smiled, not his usual faint smile of acknowledging the expected, but a smile that spoke of waiting and pain.

He had not seen her since the trial. She had left the courtroom after her testimony and he had heard nothing from her since. He had come to her house, but her maid had told him that Miss Francon could not see him.

She looked at him now and she smiled. It was, for the first time, like a gesture of complete acceptance, as if the sight of him solved everything, answered all questions, and her meaning was only to be a woman who looked at him.

They stood silently before each other for a moment, and she thought that the most beautiful words were those which were not needed.

When he moved, she said: "Don't say anything about the trial. Afterward."

When he took her in his arms, she turned her body to meet his straight on, to feel the width of his chest with the width of hers, the length of his legs with the length of hers, as if she were lying against him, and her feet felt no weight, and she was held upright by the pressure of his body.

They lay in bed together that night, and they did not know when they slept, the intervals of exhausted unconsciousness as intense an act of union as the convulsed meetings of their bodies.

In the morning, when they were dressed, she watched him move about the room. She saw the drained relaxation of his movements; she thought of what she had taken from him, and the heaviness of her wrists told her that her own strength was now in his nerves, as if they had exchanged their energy.

He was at the other end of the room, his back turned to her for a moment, when she said, "Roark," her voice quiet and low.

He turned to her, as if he had expected it and, perhaps, guessed the rest.

She stood in the middle of the floor, as she had stood on her first night in this room, solemnly composed to the performance of a rite.

"I love you, Roark."

She had said it for the first time.

She saw the reflection of her next words on his face before she had pronounced them.

"I was married yesterday. To Peter Keating."

It would have been easy, if she had seen a man distorting his mouth to bite off sound, closing his fists and twisting them in defense against himself. But it was not easy, because she did not see him doing this, yet knew that this was being done, without the relief of a physical gesture.

"Roark ... " she whispered, gently, frightened.

He said: "I'm all right." Then he said: "Please wait a moment ... All right. Go on."

"Roark, before I met you, I had always been afraid of seeing someone like you, because I knew that I'd also have to see what I saw on the witness stand and I'd have to do what I did in that courtroom. I hated doing it, because it was an insult to you to defend you — and it was an insult to myself that you had to be defended ... Roark, I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the halfway, the almost, the just-about, the in-between. They may have their justifications. I don't know. I don't care to inquire. I know that it is the one thing not given me to understand. When I think of what you are, I can't accept any reality except a world of your kind. Or at least a world in which you have a fighting chance and a fight on your own terms. That does not exist. And I can't live a life torn between that which exists — and you. It would mean to struggle against things and men who don't deserve to be your opponents. Your fight, using their methods — and that's too horrible a desecration. It would mean doing for you what I did for Peter Keating: lie, flatter, evade, compromise, pander to every ineptitude — in order to beg of them a chance for you, beg them to let you live, to let you function, to beg them, Roark, not to laugh at them, but to tremble because they hold the power to hurt you. Am I too weak because I can't do this? I don't know which is the greater strength: to accept all this for you — or to love you so much that the rest is beyond acceptance. I don't know. I love you too much."

He looked at her, waiting. She knew that he had understood this long ago, but that it had to be said.

"You're not aware of them. I am. I can't help it, I love you. The contrast is too great. Roark, you won't win, they'll destroy you, but I won't be there to see it happen. I will have destroyed myself first. That's the only gesture of protest open to me. What else could I offer you? The things people sacrifice are so little. I'll give you my marriage to Peter Keating. I'll refuse to permit myself happiness in their world. I'll take suffering. That will be my answer to them, and my gift to you. I shall probably never see you again. I shall try not to. But I will live for you, through every minute and every shameful act I take, I will live for you in my own way, in the only way I can."

He made a movement to speak, and she said:

"Wait. Let me finish. You could ask, why not kill myself then. Because I love you. Because you exist. That alone is so much that it won't allow me to die. And since I must be alive in order to know that you are, I will live in the world as it is, in the manner of life it demands. Not halfway, but completely. Not pleading and running from it, but walking out to meet it, beating it to the pain and the ugliness, being first to choose the worst it can do to me. Not as the wife of some half-decent human being, but as the wife of Peter Keating. And only within my own mind, only where nothing can touch it, kept sacred by the protecting wall of my own degradation, there will be the thought of you and the knowledge of you, and I shall say 'Howard Roark to myself once in a while, and I shall feel that I have deserved to say it." She stood before him, her face raised; her lips were not drawn, but closed softly, yet the shape of her mouth was too definite on her face, a shape of pain and tenderness, and resignation.

In his face she saw suffering that was made old, as if it had been part of him for a long time, because it was accepted, and it looked not like a wound, but like a scar.

"Dominique, if I told you now to have that marriage annulled at once — to forget the world and my struggle — to feel no anger, no concern, no hope — just to exist for me, for my need of you — as my wife — as my property ... ?"

He saw in her face what she had seen in his when she told him of her marriage; but he was not frightened and he watched it calmly. After a while, she answered and the words did not come from her lips, but as if her lips were forced to gather the sounds from the outside: "I'd obey you."

"Now you see why I won't do it. I won't try to stop you. I love you, Dominique." She closed her eyes, and he said:

"You'd rather not hear it now? But I want you to hear it. We never need to say anything to each other when we're together. This is — for the time when we won't be together. I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breathe air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival. I've given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need. This is the only way you can wish to be loved. This is the only way I can want you to love me. If you married me now, I would become your whole existence. But I would not want you then. You would not want yourself — and so you would not love me long. To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I.' The kind of surrender I could have from you now would give me nothing but an empty hulk. If I demanded it, I'd destroy you. That's why I won't stop you. I'll let you go to your husband. I don't know how I'll live through tonight, but I will. I want you whole, as I am, as you'll remain in the battle you've chosen. A battle is never selfless."

She heard, in the measured tension of his words, that it was harder for him to speak them than for her to listen. So she listened.

"You must learn not to be afraid of the world. Not to be held by it as you are now. Never to be hurt by it as you were in that courtroom. I must let you learn it. I can't help you. You must find your own way. When you have, you'll come back to me. They won't destroy me, Dominique. And they won't destroy you. You'll win, because you've chosen the hardest way of fighting for your freedom from the world. I'll wait for you. I love you. I'm saying this now for all the years we'll have to wait. I love you, Dominique."

Then he kissed her and let her go.

15.

AT NINE O'CLOCK that morning Peter Keating was pacing the floor of his room, his door locked. He forgot that it was nine o'clock and that Catherine was waiting for him. He had made himself forget her and everything she implied.

The door of his room was locked to protect him from his mother. Last night, seeing his furious restlessness, she had forced him to tell her the truth. He had snapped that he was married to Dominique Francon, and he had added some sort of explanation about Dominique going out of town to announce the marriage to some old relative. His mother had been so busy with gasps of delight and questions, that he had been able to 'answer nothing and to hide his panic; he was not certain that he had a wife and that she would come back to him in the morning.

He had forbidden his mother to announce the news, but she had made a few telephone calls last night, and she was making a few more this morning, and now their telephone was ringing constantly, with eager voices asking: "Is it true?" pouring out sounds of amazement and congratulations. Keating could see the news spreading through the city in widening circles, by the names and social positions of the people who called. He refused to answer the telephone. It seemed to him that every corner of New York was flooded with celebration and that he alone, hidden in the watertight caisson of his room, was cold and lost and horrified.

It was almost noon when the doorbell rang, and he pressed his hands to his ears, not to know who it was and what they wanted. Then he heard his mother's voice, so shrill with joy that it sounded embarrassingly silly: "Petey darling, don't you want to come out and kiss your wife?" He flew out into the hall, and there was Dominique, removing her soft mink coat, the fur throwing to his nostrils a wave of the street's cold air touched by her perfume. She was smiling correctly, looking straight at him, saying: "Good morning, Peter."

He stood drawn up, for one instant, and in that instant he relived all the telephone calls and felt the triumph to which they entitled him. He moved as a man in the arena of a crowded stadium, he smiled as if he felt the ray of an arc light playing in the creases of his smile, and he said: "Dominique my dear, this is like a dream come true!"

The dignity of their doomed understanding was gone and their marriage was what it had been intended to be.

She seemed glad of it. She said: "Sorry you didn't carry me over the threshold, Peter." He did not kiss her, but took her hand and kissed her arm above the wrist, in casual, intimate tenderness.

He saw his mother standing there, and he said with a dashing gesture of triumph: "Mother — Dominique Keating."

He saw his mother kissing her. Dominique returned the kiss gravely. Mrs. Keating was gulping: "My dear, I'm so happy, so happy, God bless you, I had no idea you were so beautiful!"

He did not know what to do next, but Dominique took charge, simply, leaving them no time for wonder. She walked into the living room and she said: "Let's have lunch first, and then you'll show me the place, Peter. My things will be here in an hour or so."

Mrs. Keating beamed: "Lunch is all ready for three, Miss Fran ... " She stopped. "Oh, dear, what am I to call you, honey? Mrs. Keating or ... "

"Dominique, of course," Dominique answered without smiling.

"Aren't we going to announce, to invite anyone, to ... ?" Keating began, but Dominique said:

"Afterwards, Peter. It will announce itself."

Later, when her luggage arrived, he saw her walking into his bedroom without hesitation. She instructed the maid how to hang up her clothes, she asked him to help her rearrange the contents of the closets.

Mrs. Keating looked puzzled. "But aren't you children going to go away at all? It's all so sudden and romantic, but — no honeymoon of any kind?"

"No," said Dominique, "I don't want to take Peter away from his work."

He said: "This is temporary of course, Dominique. We'll have to move to another apartment, a bigger one. I want you to choose it."

"Why, no," she said. "I don't think that's necessary. We'll remain here."

"I'll move out," Mrs. Keating offered generously, without thinking, prompted by an overwhelming fear of Dominique. "I'll take a little place for myself."

"No," said Dominique. "I'd rather you wouldn't. I want to change nothing. I want to fit myself into Peter's life just as it is."

"That's sweet of you!" Mrs. Keating smiled, while Keating thought numbly that it was not sweet of her at all.

Mrs. Keating knew that when she had recovered she would hate her daughter-in-law. She could have accepted snubbing. She could not forgive Dominique's grave politeness.

The telephone rang. Keating's chief designer at the office delivered his congratulations and said: "We just heard it, Peter, and Guy's pretty stunned. I really think you ought to call him up or come over here or something."

Keating hurried to the office, glad to escape from his house for a while. He entered the office like a perfect figure of a radiant young lover. He laughed and shook hands in the drafting room, through noisy congratulations, gay shouts of envy and a few smutty references. Then he hastened to Francon's office.

For an instant he felt oddly guilty when he entered and saw the smile on Francon's face, a smile like a blessing. He tugged affectionately at Francon's shoulders and he muttered: "I'm so happy, Guy, I'm so happy ... "

"I've always expected it," said Francon quietly, "but now I feel right. Now it's right that it should be all yours, Peter, all of it, this room, everything, soon."

"What are you talking about?"

"Come, you always understand. I'm tired, Peter. You know, there comes a time when you get tired in a way that's final and then ... No, you wouldn't know, you're too young. But hell, Peter, of what use am I around here? The funny part of it is that I don't care any more even about pretending to be of any use ... I like to be honest sometimes. It's a nice sort of feeling ... Well, anyway, it might be another year or two, but then I'm going to retire. Then it's all yours. It might amuse me to hang on around here just a little longer — you know, I actually love the place — it's so busy, it's done so well, people respect us — it was a good firm, Francon & Heyer, wasn't it? — What the hell am I saying? Francon & Keating. Then it will be just Keating ... Peter," he asked softly, "why don't you look happy?"

"Of course I'm happy, I'm very grateful and all that, but why in blazes should you think of retiring now?"

"I don't mean that. I mean — why don't you look happy when I say that it will be yours? I ... I'd like you to be happy about that, Peter."

"For God's sake, Guy, you're being morbid, you're ... "

"Peter, it's very important to me — that you should be happy at what I'm leaving you. That you should be proud of it. And you are, aren't you, Peter? You are?"

"Well, who wouldn't be?" He did not look at Francon. He could not stand the sound of pleading in Francon's voice.

"Yes, who wouldn't be? Of course ... And you are, Peter?"

"What do you want?" snapped Keating angrily.

"I want you to feel proud of me, Peter," said Francon humbly, simply, desperately. "I want to know that I've accomplished something. I want to feel that it had some meaning. At the last summing up, I want to be sure that it wasn't all — for nothing."

"You're not sure of that? You're not sure?" Keating's eyes were murderous, as if Francon were a sudden danger to him.

"What's the matter, Peter?" Francon asked gently, almost indifferently.

"God damn you, you have no right — not to be sure! At your age, with your name, with your prestige, with your ... "

"I want to be sure, Peter. I've worked very hard."

"But you're not sure!" He was furious and frightened, and so he wanted to hurt, and he flung out the one thing that could hurt most, forgetting that it hurt him, not Francon, that Francon wouldn't know, had never known, wouldn't even guess: "Well, I know somebody who'll be sure, at the end of his life, who'll be so God-damn sure I'd like to cut his damn throat for it!"

"Who?" asked Francon quietly, without interest. "Guy! Guy, what's the matter with us? What are we talking about?"

"I don't know," said Francon. He looked tired.

That evening Francon came to Keating's house for dinner. He was dressed jauntily, and he twinkled with his old gallantry as he kissed Mrs. Keating's hand. But he looked grave when he congratulated Dominique and he found little to say to her; there was a pleading look in his eyes when he glanced up at her face. Instead of the bright, cutting mockery he had expected from her, he saw a sudden understanding. She said nothing, but bent down and kissed him on the forehead and held her lips pressed gently to his head a second longer than formality required. He felt a warm flood of gratitude — and then he felt frightened. "Dominique," he whispered — the others could not hear him — "how terribly unhappy you must be ... " She laughed gaily, taking his arm: "Why, no, Father, how can you say that!"

"Forgive me," he muttered, "I'm just stupid ... This is really wonderful ... "

Guests kept coming in all evening, uninvited and unannounced, anyone who had heard the news and felt privileged to drop in. Keating did not know whether he was glad to see them or not. It seemed all right, so long as the gay confusion lasted. Dominique behaved exquisitely. He did not catch a single hint of sarcasm in her manner.

It was late when the last guest departed and they were left alone among the filled ash trays and empty glasses. They sat at opposite ends of the living room, and Keating tried to postpone the moment of thinking what he had to think now.

"All right, Peter," said Dominique, rising, "let's get it over with."

When he lay in the darkness beside her, his desire satisfied and left hungrier than ever by the unmoving body that had not responded, not even in revulsion, when he felt defeated in the one act of mastery he had hoped to impose upon her, his first whispered words were: "God damn you!"

He heard no movement from her.

Then he remembered the discovery which the moments of passion had wiped off his mind.

"Who was he?" he asked.

"Howard Roark," she answered.

"All right," he snapped, "you don't have to tell me if you don't want to!"

He switched on the light. He saw her lying still, naked, her head thrown back. Her face looked peaceful, innocent, clean. She said to the ceiling, her voice gentle: "Peter, if I could do this ... I can do anything now ... "

"If you think I'm going to bother you often, if that's your idea of ... "

"As often or as seldom as you wish, Peter."

Next morning, entering the dining room for breakfast, Dominique found a florist's box, long and white, resting across her plate.

"What's that?" she asked the maid.

"It was brought this morning, madam, with instructions to be put on the breakfast table."

The box was addressed to Mrs. Peter Keating. Dominique opened it. It contained a few branches of white lilac, more extravagantly luxurious than orchids at this time of the year. There was a small card with a name written upon it in large letters that still held the quality of a hand's dashing movement, as if the letters were laughing on the pasteboard: "Ellsworth M. Toohey."

"How nice!" said Keating. "I wondered why we hadn't heard from him at all yesterday."

"Please put them in water, Mary," said Dominique, handing the box to the maid.

In the afternoon Dominique telephoned Toohey and invited him for dinner.

The dinner took place a few days later. Keating's mother had pleaded some previous engagement and escaped for the evening; she explained it to herself by believing that she merely needed time to get used to things. So there were only three places set on the dining-room table, candles in crystal holders, a centerpiece of blue flowers and glass bubbles.

When Toohey entered he bowed to his hosts in a manner proper to a court reception. Dominique looked like a society hostess who had always been a society hostess and could not possibly be imagined as anything else.

"Well, Ellsworth? Well?" Keating asked, with a gesture that included the hall, the air and Dominique.

"My dear Peter," said Toohey, "let's skip the obvious."

Dominique led the way into the living room. She wore a dinner dress — a white satin blouse tailored like a man's, and a long black skirt, straight and simple as the polished planes of her hair. The narrow band of the skirt about her waistline seemed to state that two hands could encircle her waist completely or snap her figure in half without much effort. The short sleeves left her arms bare, and she wore a plain gold bracelet, too large and heavy for her thin wrist. She had an appearance of elegance become perversion, an appearance of wise, dangerous maturity achieved by looking like a very young girl.

"Ellsworth, isn't it wonderful?" said Keating, watching Dominique as one watches a fat bank account. "No less than I expected," said Toohey. "And no more." At the dinner table Keating did most of the talking. He seemed possessed by a talking jag. He turned over words with the sensuous abandon of a cat rolling in catnip.

"Actually, Ellsworth, it was Dominique who invited you. I didn't ask her to. You're our first formal guest. I think that's wonderful. My wife and my best friend. I've always had the silly idea that you two didn't like each other. God knows where I get those notions. But this is what makes me so damn happy — the three of us, together."

"Then you don't believe in mathematics, do you, Peter?" said Toohey. "Why the surprise? Certain figures in combination have to give certain results. Granting three entities such as Dominique, you and I — this had to be the inevitable sum."

"They say three's a crowd," laughed Keating. "But that's bosh. Two are better than one, and sometimes three are better than two, it all depends."

"The only thing wrong with that old cliché," said Toohey, "is the erroneous implication that 'a crowd' is a term of opprobrium. It is quite the opposite. As you are so merrily discovering. Three, I might add, is a mystic key number. As for instance, the Holy Trinity. Or the triangle, without which we would have no movie industry. There are so many variations upon the triangle, not necessarily unhappy. Like the three of us — with me serving as understudy for the hypotenuse, quite an appropriate substitution, since I'm replacing my antipode, don't you think so, Dominique?"

They were finishing dessert when Keating was called to the telephone. They could hear his impatient voice in the next room, snapping instructions to a draftsman who was working late on a rush job and needed help. Toohey turned, looked at Dominique and smiled. The smile said everything her manner had not allowed to be said earlier. There was no visible movement on her face, as she held his glance, but there was a change of expression, as if she were acknowledging his meaning instead of refusing to understand it. He would have preferred the closed look of refusal. The acceptance was infinitely more scornful.

"So you've come back to the fold, Dominique?"

"Yes, Ellsworth."

"No more pleas for mercy?"

"Does it appear as if they will be necessary?"

"No. I admire you, Dominique ... How do you like it? I should imagine Peter is not bad, though not as good as the man we're both thinking of, who's probably superlative, but you'll never have a chance to learn."

She did not look disgusted; she looked genuinely puzzled.

"What are you talking about, Ellsworth?"

"Oh, come, my dear, we're past pretending now, aren't we? You've been in love with Roark from that first moment you saw him in Kiki Holcombe's drawing room — or shall I be honest? — you wanted to sleep with him — but he wouldn't spit at you — hence all your subsequent behavior."

"Is that what you thought?" she asked quietly. "Wasn't it obvious? The woman scorned. As obvious as the fact that Roark had to be the man you'd want. That you'd want him in the most primitive way. And that he'd never know you existed."

"I overestimated you, Ellsworth," she said. She had lost all interest in his presence, even the need of caution. She looked bored. He frowned, puzzled.

Keating came back. Toohey slapped his shoulder as he passed by on the way to his seat.

"Before I go, Peter, we must have a chat about the rebuilding of the Stoddard Temple. I want you to bitch that up, too."

"Ellsworth ... !" he gasped.

Toohey laughed. "Don't be stuffy, Peter. Just a little professional vulgarity. Dominique won't mind. She's an ex-newspaper woman."

"What's the matter, Ellsworth?" Dominique asked. "Feeling pretty desperate? The weapons aren't up to your usual standard." She rose. "Shall we have coffee in the drawing room?"

Hopton Stoddard added a generous sum to the award he had won from Roark, and the Stoddard Temple was rebuilt for its new purpose by a group of architects chosen by Ellsworth Toohey: Peter Keating, Gordon L. Prescott, John Erik Snyte and somebody named Gus Webb, a boy of twenty-four who liked to utter obscenities when passing well-bred women on the street, and who had never handled an architectural commission of his own. Three of these men had social and professional standing; Gus Webb had none; Toohey included him for that reason. Of the four Gus Webb had the loudest voice and the greatest self-assurance. Gus Webb said he was afraid of nothing; he meant it. They were all members of the Council of American Builders.

The Council of American Builders had grown. After the Stoddard trial many earnest discussions were held informally in the club rooms of the A.G.A. The attitude of the A.G.A. toward Ellsworth Toohey had not been cordial, particularly since the establishment of his Council. But the trial brought a subtle change; many members pointed out that the article in "One Small Voice" had actually brought about the Stoddard lawsuit; and that a man who could force clients to sue was a man to be treated with caution. So it was suggested that Ellsworth Toohey should be invited to address the A.G.A. at one of its luncheons. Some members objected, Guy Francon among them. The most passionate objector was a young architect who made an eloquent speech, his voice trembling with the embarrassment of speaking in public for the first time; he said that he admired Ellsworth Toohey and had always agreed with Toohey's social ideals, but if a group of people felt that some person was acquiring power over them, that was the time to fight such a person. The majority overruled him. Ellsworth Toohey was asked to speak at the luncheon, the attendance was enormous and Toohey made a witty, gracious speech. Many members of the A.G.A. joined the Council of American Builders, John Erik Snyte among the first.

The four architects in charge of the Stoddard reconstruction met in Keating's office, around a table on which they spread blueprints of the Temple, photographs of Roark's original drawings, obtained from the contractor, and a clay model which Keating had ordered made. They talked about the depression and its disastrous effect on the building industry; they talked about women, and Gordon L. Prescott told a few jokes of a bathroom nature. Then Gus Webb raised his fist and smacked it plump upon the roof of the model which was not quite dry and spread into a flat mess. "Well, boys," he said, "let's go to work."

"Gus, you son of a bitch," said Keating, "the thing cost money."

"Balls!" said Gus, "we're not paying for it."

Each of them had a set of photographs of the original sketches with the signature "Howard Roark" visible in the corner. They spent many evenings and many weeks, drawing their own versions right on the originals, remaking and improving. They took longer than necessary. They made more changes than required. They seemed to find pleasure in doing it. Afterward, they put the four versions together and made a cooperative combination. None of them had ever enjoyed a job quite so much. They had long, friendly conferences. There were minor dissensions, such as Gus Webb saying: "Hell, Gordon, if the kitchen's going to be yours, then the johns've got to be mine," but these were only surface ripples. They felt a sense of unity and an anxious affection for one another, the kind of brotherhood that makes a man withstand the third degree rather than squeal on the gang.

The Stoddard Temple was not torn down, but its framework was carved into five floors, containing dormitories, schoolrooms, infirmary, kitchen, laundry. The entrance hall was paved with colored marble, the stairways had railings of hand-wrought aluminum, the shower stalls were glass-enclosed, the recreation rooms had gold-leafed Corinthian pilasters. The huge windows were left untouched, merely crossed by floorlines.

The four architects had decided to achieve an effect of harmony and therefore not to use any historical style in its pure form. Peter Keating designed the white marble semi-Doric portico that rose over the main entrance, and the Venetian balconies for which new doors were cut. John Erik Snyte designed the small semi-Gothic spire surmounted by a cross, and the bandcourses of stylized acanthus leaves which were cut into the limestone of the walls. Gordon L. Prescott designed the semi-Renaissance cornice, and the glass-enclosed terrace projecting from the third floor. Gus Webb designed a cubistic ornament to frame the original windows, and the modern neon sign on the roof, which read: "The Hopton Stoddard Home for Subnormal Children."

"Comes the revolution," said Gus Webb, looking at the completed structure, "and every kid in the country will have a home like that!"

The original shape of the building remained discernible. It was not like a corpse whose fragments had been mercifully scattered; it was like a corpse hacked to pieces and reassembled.

In September the tenants of the Home moved in. A small, expert staff was chosen by Toohey. It had been harder to find the children who qualified as inmates. Most of them had to be taken from other institutions. Sixty-five children, their ages ranging from three to fifteen, were picked out by zealous ladies who were full of kindness and so made a point of rejecting those who could be cured and selecting only the hopeless cases. There was a fifteen-year-old boy who had never learned to speak; a grinning child who could not be taught to read or write; a girl born without a nose, whose father was also her grandfather; a person called "Jackie" of whose age or sex nobody could be certain. They marched into their new home, their eyes staring vacantly, the stare of death before which no world existed.

On warm evenings children from the slums nearby would sneak into the park of the Stoddard Home and gaze wistfully at the playrooms, the gymnasium, the kitchen beyond the big windows. These children had filthy clothes and smudged faces, agile little bodies, impertinent grins, and eyes bright with a roaring, imperious, demanding intelligence. The ladies in charge of the Home chased them away with angry exclamations about "little gangsters."

Once a month a delegation from the sponsors came to visit the Home. It was a distinguished group whose names were in many exclusive registers, though no personal achievement had ever put them there. It was a group of mink coats and diamond clips; occasionally, there was a dollar cigar and a glossy derby from a British shop among them. Ellsworth Toohey was always present to show them through the Home. The inspection made the mink coats seem warmer and their wearers' rights to them incontestable, since it established superiority and altruistic virtue together, in a demonstration more potent than a visit to a morgue. On the way back from such an inspection Ellsworth Toohey received humbled compliments on the wonderful work he was doing, and had no trouble in obtaining checks for his other humanitarian activities, such as publications, lecture courses, radio forums and the Workshop of Social Study.

Catherine Halsey was put in charge of the children's occupational therapy, and she moved into the Home as a permanent resident. She took up her work with a fierce zeal. She spoke about it insistently to anyone who would listen. Her voice was dry and arbitrary. When she spoke, the movements of her mouth hid the two lines that had appeared recently, cut from her nostrils to her chin; people preferred her not to remove her glasses; her eyes were not good to see. She spoke belligerently about her work not being charity, but "human reclamation."

The most important time of her day was the hour assigned to the children's art activities, known as the "Creative Period." There was a special room for the purpose — a room with a view of the distant city skyline — where the children were given materials and encouraged to create freely, under the guidance of Catherine who stood watch over them like an angel presiding at a birth.

She was elated on the day when Jackie, the least promising one of the lot, achieved a completed work of imagination. Jackie picked up fistfuls of colored felt scraps and a pot of glue, and carried them to a corner of the room. There was, in the corner, a slanting ledge projecting from the wall-plastered over and painted green — left from Roark's modeling of the Temple interior that had once controlled the recession of the light at sunset. Catherine walked over to Jackie and saw, spread out on the ledge, the recognizable shape of a dog, brown, with blue spots and five legs. Jackie wore an expression of pride. "Now you see, you see?" Catherine said to her colleagues. "Isn't it wonderful and moving! There's no telling how far the child will go with proper encouragement. Think of what happens to their little souls if they are frustrated in their creative instincts! It's so important not to deny them a chance for self-expression. Did you see Jackie's face?"

Dominique's statue had been sold. No one knew who bought it. It had been bought by Ellsworth Toohey.

Roark's office had shrunk back to one room. After the completion of the Cord Building he found no work. The depression had wrecked the building trade; there was little work for anyone; it was said that the skyscraper was finished; architects were closing their offices.

A few commissions still dribbled out occasionally, and a group of architects hovered about them with the dignity of a bread line. There were men like Ralston Holcombe among them, men who had never begged, but had demanded references before they accepted a client. When Roark tried to get a commission, he was rejected in a manner implying that if he had no more sense than that, politeness would be a wasted effort. "Roark?" cautious businessmen said. "The tabloid hero? Money's too scarce nowadays to waste it on lawsuits afterwards."

He got a few jobs, remodeling rooming houses, an assignment that involved no more than erecting partitions and rearranging the plumbing. "Don't take it, Howard," Austen Heller said angrily. "The infernal gall of offering you that kind of work! After a skyscraper like the Cord Building. After the Enright House."

"I'll take anything," said Roark.

The Stoddard award had taken more than the amount of his fee for the Cord Building. But he had saved enough to exist on for a while. He paid Mallory's rent and he paid for most of their frequent meals together.

Mallory had tried to object. "Shut up, Steve," Roark had said. "I'm not doing it for you. At a time like this I owe myself a few luxuries. So I'm simply buying the most valuable thing that can be bought — your time. I'm competing with a whole country — and that's quite a luxury, isn't it? They want you to do baby plaques and I don't, and I like having my way against theirs."

"What do you want me to work on, Howard?"

"I want you to work without asking anyone what he wants you to work on."

Austen Heller heard about it from Mallory, and spoke of it to Roark in private.

"If you're helping him, why don't you let me help you?"

"I'd let you if you could," said Roark. "But you can't. All he needs is his time. He can work without clients. I can't."

"It's amusing, Howard, to see you in the role of an altruist."

"You don't have to insult me. It's not altruism. But I'll tell you this: most people say they're concerned with the suffering of others. I'm not. And yet there's one thing I can't understand. Most of them would not pass by if they saw a man bleeding in the road, mangled by a hit-and-run driver. And most of them would not turn their heads to look at Steven Mallory. But don't they know that if suffering could be measured, there's no suffering in Steven Mallory when he can't do the work he wants to do, than in a whole field of victims mowed down by a tank? If one must relieve the pain of this world, isn't Mallory the place to begin? ... However, that's not why I'm doing it."

Roark had never seen the reconstructed Stoddard Temple. On an evening in November he went to see it. He did not know whether it was surrender to pain or victory over the fear of seeing it.

It was late and the garden of the Stoddard Home was deserted. The building was dark, a single light showed in a back window upstairs. Roark stood looking at the building for a long time.

The door under the Greek portico opened and a slight masculine figure came out. It hurried casually down the steps — and then stopped.

"Hello, Mr. Roark," said Ellsworth Toohey quietly.

Roark looked at him without curiosity. "Hello," said Roark.

"Please don't run away." The voice was not mocking, but earnest.

"I wasn't going to."

"I think I knew that you'd come here some day and I think I wanted to be here when you came. I've kept inventing excuses for myself to hang about this place." There was no gloating in the voice; it sounded drained and simple.

"Well?"

"You shouldn't mind speaking to me. You see, I understand your work. What I do about it is another matter."

"You are free to do what you wish about it."

"I understand your work better than any living person — with the possible exception of Dominique Francon. And, perhaps, better than she does. That's a deal, isn't it, Mr. Roark? You haven't many people around you who can say that. It's a greater bond than if I were your devoted, but blind supporter."

"I knew you understood."

"Then you won't mind talking to me."

"About what?"

In the darkness it sounded almost as if Toohey had sighed. After a while he pointed to the building and asked:

"Do you understand this?"

Roark did not answer.

Toohey went on softly: "What does it look like to you? Like a senseless mess? Like a chance collection of driftwood? Like an imbecile chaos? But is it, Mr. Roark? Do you see no method? You who know the language of structure and the meaning of form. Do you see no purpose here?"

"I see none in discussing it."

"Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us."

"But I don't think of you."

Toohey's face had an expression of attentiveness, of listening quietly to something as simple as fate. He remained silent, and Roark asked:

"What did you want to say to me?"

Toohey looked at him, and then at the bare trees around them, at the river far below, at the great rise of the sky beyond the river.

"Nothing," said Toohey.

He walked away, his steps creaking on the gravel in the silence, sharp and even, like the cracks of an engine's pistons.

Roark stood alone in the empty driveway, looking at the building.