The Fountainhead

1.

THE LEAVES streamed down, trembling in the sun. They were not green; only a few, scattered through the torrent, stood out in single drops of a green so bright and pure that it hurt the eyes; the rest were not a color, but a light, the substance of fire on metal, living sparks without edges. And it looked as if the forest were a spread of light boiling slowly to produce this color, this green rising in small bubbles, the condensed essence of spring. The trees met, bending over the road, and the spots of sun on the ground moved with the shifting of the branches, like a conscious caress. The young man hoped he would not have to die.

Not if the earth could look like this, he thought. Not if he could hear the hope and the promise like a voice, with leaves, tree trunks and rocks instead of words. But he knew that the earth looked like this only because he had seen no sign of men for hours; he was alone, riding his bicycle down a forgotten trail through the hills of Pennsylvania where he had never been before, where he could feel the fresh wonder of an untouched world.

He was a very young man. He had just graduated from college — in this spring of the year 1935 — and he wanted to decide whether life was worth living. He did not know that this was the question in his mind. He did not think of dying. He thought only that he wished to find joy and reason and meaning in life — and that none had been offered to him anywhere.

He had not liked the things taught to him in college. He had been taught a great deal about social responsibility, about a life of service and self-sacrifice. Everybody had said it was beautiful and inspiring. Only he had not felt inspired. He had felt nothing at all.

He could not name the thing he wanted of life. He felt it here, in this wild loneliness. But he did not face nature with the joy of a healthy animal — as a proper and final setting; he faced it with the joy of a healthy man — as a challenge; as tools, means and material. So he felt anger that he should find exultation only in the wilderness, that this great sense of hope had to be lost when he would return to men and men's work. He thought that this was not right; that man's work should be a higher step, an improvement on nature, not a degradation. He did not want to despise men; he wanted to love and admire them. But he dreaded the sight of the first house, poolroom and movie poster he would encounter on his way.

He had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the thing he sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the first phrases of Tchaikovsky's First Concerto — or the last movement of Rachmaninoff's Second. Men have not found the words for it nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. Let me see that in one single act of man on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the promise of that music. Not servants nor those served; not altars and immolations; but the final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers — show me yours — show me that it is possible — show me your achievement — and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.

He saw a blue hole ahead, where the road ended on the crest of a ridge. The blue looked cool and clean like a film of water stretched in the frame of green branches. It would be funny, he thought, if I came to the edge and found nothing but that blue beyond; nothing but the sky ahead, above and below. He closed his eyes and went on, suspending the possible for a moment, granting himself a dream, a few instants of believing that he would reach the crest, open his eyes and see the blue radiance of the sky below.

His foot touched the ground, breaking his motion; he stopped and opened his eyes. He stood still.

In the broad valley, far below him, in the first sunlight of early morning, he saw a town. Only it was not a town. Towns did not look like that. He had to suspend the possible for a while longer, to seek no questions or explanations, only to look.

There were small houses on the ledges of the hill before him, flowing down to the bottom. He knew that the ledges had not been touched, that no artifice had altered the unplanned beauty of the graded steps. Yet some power had known how to build on these ledges in such a way that the houses became inevitable, and one could no longer imagine the hills as beautiful without them — as if the centuries and the series of chances that produced these ledges in the struggle of great blind forces had waited for their final expression, had been only a road to a goal — and the goal was these buildings, part of the hills, shaped by the hills, yet ruling them by giving them meaning.

The houses were plain field stone — like the rocks jutting from the green hillsides — and of glass, great sheets of glass used as if the sun were invited to complete the structures, sunlight becoming part of the masonry. There were many houses, they were small, they were cut off from one another, and no two of them were alike. But they were like variations of a single theme, like a symphony played by an inexhaustible imagination, and one could still hear the laughter of the force that had been let loose on them, as if that force had run, unrestrained, challenging itself to be spent, but had never reached its end. Music, he thought, the promise of the music he had invoked, the sense of it made real — there it was before his eyes — he did not see it — he heard it in chords — he thought that there was a common language of thought, sight and sound — was it mathematics? — the discipline of reason — music was mathematics — and architecture was music in stone — he knew he was dizzy because this place below him could not be real.

He saw trees, lawns, walks twisting up the hillsides, steps cut in the stone, he saw fountains, swimming pools, tennis courts — and not a sign of life. The place was uninhabited.

It did not shock him, not as the sight of it had shocked him. In a way, it seemed proper; this was not part of known existence. For the moment he had no desire to know what it was.

After a long time he glanced about him — and then he saw that he was not alone. Some steps away from him a man sat on a boulder, looking down at the valley. The man seemed absorbed in the sight and had not heard his approach. The man was tall and gaunt and had orange hair.

He walked straight to the man, who turned his eyes to him; the eyes were gray and calm; the boy knew suddenly that they felt the same thing, and he could speak as he would not speak to a stranger anywhere else.

"That isn't real, is it?" the boy asked, pointing down.

"Why, yes, it is, now," the man answered.

"It's not a movie set or a trick of some kind?"

"No. It's a summer resort. It's just been completed. It will be opened in a few weeks."

"Who built it?"

"I did."

"What's your name?"

"Howard Roark."

"Thank you," said the boy. He knew that the steady eyes looking at him understood everything these two words had to cover. Howard Roark inclined his head, in acknowledgment.

Wheeling his bicycle by his side, the boy took the narrow path down the slope of the hill to the valley and the houses below. Roark looked after him. He had never seen that boy before and he would never see him again. He did not know that he had given someone the courage to face a lifetime.

Roark had never understood why he was chosen to build the summer resort at Monadnock Valley.

It had happened a year and a half ago, in the fall of 1933. He had heard of the project and gone to see Mr. Caleb Bradley, the head of some vast company that had purchased the valley and was doing a great deal of loud promotion. He went to see Bradley as a matter of duty, without hope, merely to add another refusal to his long list of refusals. He had built nothing in New York since the Stoddard Temple.

When he entered Bradley's office, he knew that he must forget Monadnock Valley because this man would never give it to him. Caleb Bradley was a short, pudgy person with a handsome face between rounded shoulders. The face looked wise and boyish, unpleasantly ageless; he could have been fifty or twenty; he had blank blue eyes, sly and bored.

But it was difficult for Roark to forget Monadnock Valley. So he spoke of it, forgetting that speech was useless here. Mr. Bradley listened, obviously interested, but obviously not in what Roark was saying. Roark could almost feel some third entity present in the room. Mr. Bradley said little, beyond promising to consider it and to get in touch with him. But then he said a strange thing. He asked, in a voice devoid of all clue to the purpose of the question, neither in approval nor scorn: "You're the architect who built the Stoddard Temple, aren't you, Mr. Roark?" "Yes," said Roark. "Funny that I hadn't thought of you myself," said Mr. Bradley. Roark went away, thinking that it would have been funny if Mr. Bradley had thought of him.

Three days later, Bradley telephoned and invited him to his office. Roark came and met four other men — the Board of the Monadnock Valley Company. They were well-dressed men, and their faces were as closed as Mr. Bradley's. "Please tell these gentlemen what you told me, Mr. Roark," Bradley said pleasantly.

Roark explained his plan. If what they wished to build was an unusual summer resort for people of moderate incomes — as they had announced — then they should realize that the worst curse of poverty was the lack of privacy; only the very rich or the very poor of the city could enjoy their summer vacations; the very rich, because they had private estates; the very poor, because they did not mind the feel and smell of one another's flesh on public beaches and public dance floors; the people of good taste and small income had no place to go, if they found no rest or pleasure in herds. Why was it assumed that poverty gave one the instincts of cattle? Why not offer these people a place where, for a week or a month, at small cost, they could have what they wanted and needed? He had seen Monadnock Valley. It could be done. Don't touch those hillsides, don't blast and level them down. Not one huge ant pile of a hotel — but small houses hidden from one another, each a private estate, where people could meet or not, as they pleased. Not one fish-market tank of a swimming pool — but many private swimming pools, as many as the company wished to afford — he could show them how it could be done cheaply. Not one stock-farm corral of tennis courts for exhibitionists — but many private tennis courts. Not a place where one went to meet "refined company" and land a husband in two weeks — but a resort for people who enjoyed their own presence well enough and sought only a place where they would be left free to enjoy it.

The men listened to him silently. He saw them exchanging glances once in a while. He felt certain that they were the kind of glances people exchange when they cannot laugh at the speaker aloud. But it could not have been that — because he signed a contract to build the Monadnock Valley summer resort, two days later.

He demanded Mr. Bradley's initials on every drawing that came out of his drafting rooms; he remembered the Stoddard Temple. Mr. Bradley initialed, signed, okayed; he agreed to everything; he approved everything. He seemed delighted to let Roark have his way. But this eager complaisance had a peculiar undertone — as if Mr. Bradley were humoring a child.

He could learn little about Mr. Bradley. It was said that the man had made a fortune in real estate, in the Florida boom. His present company seemed to command unlimited funds, and the names of many wealthy backers were mentioned as shareholders. Roark never met them. The four gentlemen of the Board did not appear again, except on short visits to the construction site, where they exhibited little interest. Mr. Bradley was in full charge of everything — but beyond a close watch over the budget he seemed to like nothing better than to leave Roark in full charge.

In the eighteen months that followed, Roark had no time to wonder about Mr. Bradley. Roark was building his greatest assignment.

For the last year he lived at the construction site, in a shanty hastily thrown together on a bare hillside, a wooden enclosure with a bed, a stove and a large table. His old draftsmen came to work for him again, some abandoning better jobs in the city, to live in shacks and tents, to work in naked plank barracks that served as architect's office. There was so much to build that none of them thought of wasting structural effort on their own shelters. They did not realize, until much later, that they had lacked comforts; and then they did not believe it — because the year at Monadnock Valley remained in their minds as the strange time when the earth stopped turning and they lived through twelve months of spring. They did not think of the snow, the frozen clots of earth, wind whistling through the cracks of planking, thin blankets over army cots, stiff fingers stretched over coal stoves in the morning, before a pencil could be held steadily. They remembered only the feeling which is the meaning of spring — one's answer to the first blades of grass, the first buds on tree branches, the first blue of the sky — the singing answer, not to grass, trees and sky, but to the great sense of beginning, of triumphant progression, of certainty in an achievement that nothing will stop. Not from leaves and flowers, but from wooden scaffoldings, from steam shovels, from blocks of stone and sheets of glass rising out of the earth they received the sense of youth, motion, purpose, fulfillment.

They were an army and it was a crusade. But none of them thought of it in these words, except Steven Mallory. Steven Mallory did the fountains and all the sculpture work of Monadnock Valley. But he came to live at the site long before he was needed. Battle, thought Steven Mallory, is a vicious concept. There is no glory in war, and no beauty in crusades of men. But this was a battle, this was an army and a war — and the highest experience in the life of every man who took part in it. Why? Where was the root of the difference and the law to explain it? He did not speak of it to anyone. But he saw the same feeling in Mike's face, when Mike arrived with the gang of electricians. Mike said nothing, but he winked at Mallory in cheerful understanding. "I told you not to worry," Mike said to him once, without preamble, "at the trial that was. He can't lose, quarries or no quarries, trials or no trials. They can't beat him, Steve, they just can't, not the whole goddamn world."

But they had really forgotten the world, thought Mallory. This was a new earth, their own. The hills rose to the sky around them, as a wall of protection. And they had another protection — the architect who walked among them, down the snow or the grass of the hillsides, over the boulders and the piled planks, to the drafting tables, to the derricks, to the tops of rising walls — the man who had made this possible — the thought in the mind of that man — and not the content of that thought, nor the result, not the vision that had created Monadnock Valley, nor the will that had made it real — but the method of his thought, the rule of its function — the method and rule which were not like those of the world beyond the hills. That stood on guard over the valley and over the crusaders within it.

And then he saw Mr. Bradley come to visit the site, to smile blandly and depart again. Then Mallory felt anger without reason — and fear. "Howard," Mallory said one night, when they sat together at a fire of dry branches on the hillside over the camp, "it's the Stoddard Temple again."

"Yes," said Roark. "I think so. But I can't figure out in just what way or what they're after."

He rolled over on his stomach and looked down at the panes of glass scattered through the darkness below; they caught reflections from somewhere and looked like phosphorescent, self-generated springs of light rising out of the ground. He said:

"It doesn't matter, Steve, does it? Not what they do about it nor who comes to live here. Only that we've made it. Would you have missed this, no matter what price they make you pay for it afterward?"

"No," said Mallory.

Roark had wanted to rent one of the houses for himself and spend the summer there, the first summer of Monadnock Valley's existence. But before the resort was open, he received a wire from New York.

"I told you I would, didn't I? It took five years to get rid of my friends and brothers, but the Aquitania is now mine — and yours. Come to finish it. Kent Lansing."

So he went back to New York — to see the rubble and cement dust cleared away from the hulk of the Unfinished Symphony, to see derricks swing girders high over Central Park, to see the gaps of windows filled, the broad decks spread over the roofs of the city, the Aquitania Hotel completed, glowing at night in the Park's skyline.

He had been very busy in the last two years. Monadnock Valley had not been his only commission. From different states, from unexpected parts of the country, calls had come for him: private homes, small office buildings, modest shops. He had built them — snatching a few hours of sleep on trains and planes that carried him from Monadnock Valley to distant small towns. The story of every commission he received was the same: "I was in New York and I liked the Enright House." "I saw the Cord Building." "I saw a picture of that temple they tore down." It was as if an underground stream flowed through the country and broke out in sudden springs that shot to the surface at random, in unpredictable places. They were small, inexpensive jobs — but he was kept working.

That summer, with Monadnock Valley completed, he had no time to worry about its future fate. But Steven Mallory worried about it. "Why don't they advertise it, Howard? Why the sudden silence? Have you noticed? There was so much talk about their grand project, so many little items in print — before they started. There was less and less while we were doing it. And now? Mr. Bradley and company have gone deaf-mute. Now, when you'd expect them to stage a press agent's orgy. Why?"

"I wouldn't know," said Roark. "I'm an architect, not a rental agent. Why should you worry? We've done our job, let them do theirs in their own way."

"It's a damn queer way. Did you see their ads — the few they've let dribble out? They say all the things you told them, about rest, peace and privacy — but how they say it! Do you know what those ads amount to in effect? 'Come to Monadnock Valley and be bored to death.' It sounds — it actually sounds as if they were trying to keep people away."

"I don't read ads, Steve."

But within a month of its opening every house in Monadnock Valley was rented. The people who came were a strange mixture: society men and women who could have afforded more fashionable resorts, young writers and unknown artists, engineers and newspapermen and factory workers. Suddenly, spontaneously, people were talking about Monadnock Valley. There was a need for that kind of a resort, a need no one had tried to satisfy. The place became news, but it was private news; the papers had not discovered it. Mr. Bradley had no press agents; Mr. Bradley and his company had vanished from public life. One magazine, unsolicited, printed four pages of photographs of Monadnock Valley, and sent a man to interview Howard Roark. By the end of summer the houses were leased in advance for the following year. In October, early one morning, the door of Roark's reception room flew open and Steven Mallory rushed in, making straight for Roark's office. The secretary tried to stop him; Roark was working and no interruptions were allowed. But Mallory shoved her aside and tore into the office, slamming the door behind. She noticed that he held a newspaper in his hand.

Roark glanced up at him, from the drafting table, and dropped his pencil. He knew that this was the way Mallory's face had looked when he shot at Ellsworth Toohey.

"Well, Howard? Do you want to know why you got Monadnock Valley?"

He threw the newspaper down on the table. Roark saw the heading of a story on the third page: "Caleb Bradley arrested."

"It's all there," said Mallory. "Don't read it. It will make you sick."

"All right, Steve, what is it?"

"They sold two hundred percent of it."

"Who did? Of what?"

"Bradley and his gang. Of Monadnock Valley." Mallory spoke with a forced, vicious, self-torturing precision. "They thought it was worthless — from the first. They got the land practically for nothing — they thought it was no place for a resort at all — out of the way, with no bus lines or movie theaters around — they thought the time wasn't right and the public wouldn't go for it. They made a lot of noise and sold snares to a lot of wealthy suckers — it was just a huge fraud. They sold two hundred percent of the place. They got twice what it cost them to build it. They were certain it would fail. They wanted it to fail. They expected no profits to distribute. They had a nice scheme ready for how to get out of it when the place went bankrupt. They were prepared for anything — except for seeing it turn into the kind of success it is. And they couldn't go on — because now they'd have to pay their backers twice the amount the place earned each year. And it's earning plenty. And they thought they had arranged for certain failure. Howard, don't you understand? They chose you as the worst architect they could find!"

Roark threw his head back and laughed.

"God damn you, Howard! It's not funny!"

"Sit down, Steve. Stop shaking. You look as if you'd just seen a whole field of butchered bodies."

"I have. I've seen worse. I've seen the root. I've seen what makes such fields possible. What do the damn fools think of as horror? Wars, murders, fires, earthquakes? To hell with that! This is horror — that story in the paper. That's what men should dread and fight and scream about and call the worst shame on their record. Howard, I'm thinking of all the explanations of evil and all the remedies offered for it through the centuries. None of them worked. None of them explained or cured anything. But the root of evil — my drooling beast — it's there. Howard, in that story. In that — and in the souls of the smug bastards who'll read it and say: 'Oh well, genius must always struggle, it's good for 'em' — and then go and look for some village idiot to help, to teach him how to weave baskets. That's the drooling beast in action. Howard, think of Monadnock. Close your eyes and see it. And then think that the men who ordered it, believed it was the worst thing they could build! Howard, there's something wrong, something very terribly wrong in the world if you were given your greatest job — as a filthy joke!"

"When will you stop thinking about that? About the world and me? When will you learn to forget it? When will Dominique ... "

He stopped. They had not mentioned that name in each other's presence for five years. He saw Mallory's eyes, intent and shocked. Mallory realized that his words had hurt Roark, hurt him enough to force this admission. But Roark turned to him and said deliberately:

"Dominique used to think just as you do."

Mallory had never spoken of what he guessed about Roark's past. Their silence had always implied that Mallory understood, that Roark knew it, and that it was not to be discussed. But now Mallory asked:

"Are you still waiting for her to come back? Mrs. Gail Wynand — God damn her!"

Roark said without emphasis:

"Shut up, Steve."

Mallory whispered: "I'm sorry."

Roark walked to his table and said, his voice normal again:

"Go home, Steve, and forget about Bradley. They'll all be suing one another now, but we won't be dragged in and they won't destroy Monadnock. Forget it, and get out, I have to work."

He brushed the newspaper off the table, with his elbow, and bent over the sheets of drafting paper.

There was a scandal over the revelations of the financing methods behind Monadnock Valley, there was a trial, a few gentlemen sentenced to the penitentiary, and a new management taking Monadnock over for the shareholders. Roark was not involved. He was busy, and he forgot to read the accounts of the trial in the papers. Mr. Bradley admitted — in apology to his partners — that he would be damned if he could have expected a resort built on a crazy, unsociable plan ever to become successful. "I did all I could — I chose the worst fool I could find."

Then Austen Heller wrote an article about Howard Roark and Monadnock Valley. He spoke of all the buildings Roark had designed, and he put into words the things Roark had said in structure. Only they were not Austen Heller's usual quiet words — they were a ferocious cry of admiration and of anger. "And may we be damned if greatness must reach us through fraud!"

The article started a violent controversy in art circles.

"Howard," Mallory said one day, some months later, "you're famous."

"Yes," said Roark, "I suppose so."

"Three-quarters of them don't know what it's all about, but they've heard the other one-quarter fighting over your name and so now they feel they must pronounce it with respect. Of the fighting quarter, four-tenths are those who hate you, three-tenths are those who feel they must express an opinion in any controversy, two-tenths are those who play safe and herald any 'discovery,' and one-tenth are those who understand. But they've all found out suddenly that there is a Howard Roark and that he's an architect. The A.G.A. Bulletin refers to you as a great but unruly talent — and the Museum of the Future has hung up photographs of Monadnock, the Enright House, the Cord Building and the Aquitania, under beautiful glass — next to the room where they've got Gordon L. Prescott. And still — I'm glad."

Kent Lansing said, one evening: "Heller did a grand job. Do you remember, Howard, what I told you once about the psychology of a pretzel? Don't despise the middleman. He's necessary. Someone had to tell them. It takes two to make a very great career: the man who is great, and the man — almost rarer — who is great enough to see greatness and say so."

Ellsworth Toohey wrote: "The paradox in all this preposterous noise is the fact that Mr. Caleb Bradley is the victim of a grave injustice. His ethics are open to censure, but his esthetics were unimpeachable. He exhibited sounder judgment in matters of architectural merit than Mr. Austen Heller, the outmoded reactionary who has suddenly turned art critic. Mr. Caleb Bradley was martyred by the bad taste of his tenants. In the opinion of this column his sentence should have been commuted in recognition of his artistic discrimination. Monadnock Valley is a fraud — but not merely a financial one."

There was little response to Roark's fame among the solid gentlemen of wealth who were the steadiest source of architectural commissions. The men who had said: "Roark? Never heard of him," now said: "Roark? He's too sensational."

But there were men who were impressed by the simple fact that Roark had built a place which made money for owners who didn't want to make money; this was more convincing than abstract artistic discussions. And there was the one-tenth who understood. In the year after Monadnock Valley Roark built two private homes in Connecticut, a movie theater in Chicago, a hotel in Philadelphia.

In the spring of 1936 a western city completed plans for a World's Fair to be held next year, an international exposition to be known as "The March of the Centuries." The committee of distinguished civic leaders in charge of the project chose a council of the country's best architects to design the fair. The civic leaders wished to be conspicuously progressive. Howard Roark was one of the eight architects chosen.

When he received the invitation, Roark appeared before the committee and explained that he would be glad to design the fair — alone.

"But you can't be serious, Mr. Roark," the chairman declared. "After all, with a stupendous undertaking of this nature, we want the best that can be had. I mean, two heads are better than one, you know, and eight heads ... why, you can see for yourself — the best talents of the country, the brightest names — you know, friendly consultation, co-operation and collaboration — you know what makes great achievements."

"I do."

"Then you realize ... "

"If you want me, you'll have to let me do it all, alone. I don't work with councils."

"You wish to reject an opportunity like this, a shot in history, a chance of world fame, practically a chance of immortality ... "

"I don't work with collectives. I don't consult, I don't cooperate, I don't collaborate."

There was a great deal of angry comment on Roark's refusal, in architectural circles. People said: "The conceited bastard!" The indignation was too sharp and raw for a mere piece of professional gossip; each man took it as a personal insult; each felt himself qualified to alter, advise and improve the work of any man living.

"The incident illustrates to perfection," wrote Ellsworth Toohey, "the antisocial nature of Mr. Howard Roark's egotism, the arrogance of the unbridled individualism which he has always personified."

Among the eight chosen to design "The March of the Centuries" were Peter Keating, Gordon L. Prescott, Ralston Holcombe. "I won't work with Howard Roark," said Peter Keating, when he saw the list of the council, "you'll have to choose. It's he or I." He was informed that Mr. Roark had declined. Keating assumed leadership over the council. The press stories about the progress of the fair's construction referred to "Peter Keating and his associates."

Keating had acquired a sharp, intractable manner in the last few years. He snapped orders and lost his patience before the smallest difficulty; when he lost his patience, he screamed at people: he had a vocabulary of insults that carried a caustic, insidious, almost feminine malice; his face was sullen.

In the fall of 1936 Roark moved his office to the top floor of the Cord Building. He had thought when he designed that building, that it would be the place of his office some day. When he saw the inscription: "Howard Roark, Architect," on his new door, he stopped for a moment; then he walked into the office. His own room, at the end of a long suite, had three walls of glass, high over the city. He stopped in the middle of the room. Through the broad panes, he could see the Fargo Store, the Enright House, the Aquitania Hotel. He walked to the windows facing south and stood there for a long time. At the tip of Manhattan, far in the distance, he could see the Dana Building by Henry Cameron.

On an afternoon of November, returning to his office after a visit to the site of a house under construction on Long Island, Roark entered the reception room, shaking his drenched raincoat, and saw a look of suppressed excitement on the face of his secretary; she had been waiting impatiently for his return.

"Mr. Roark, this is probably something very big," she said. "I made an appointment for you for three o'clock tomorrow afternoon. At his office."

"Whose office?"

"He telephoned half an hour ago. Mr. Gail Wynand."

2.

A SIGN hung over the entrance door, a reproduction of the paper's masthead:

THE NEW YORK BANNER

The sign was small, a statement of fame and power that needed no emphasis; it was like a fine, mocking smile that justified the building's bare ugliness; the building was a factory scornful of all ornament save the implications of that masthead.

The entrance lobby looked like the mouth of a furnace; elevators drew a stream of human fuel and spat it out. The men did not hurry, but they moved with subdued haste, the propulsion of purpose; nobody loitered in that lobby. The elevator doors clicked like valves, a pulsating rhythm in their sound. Drops of red and green light flashed on a wall board, signaling the progress of cars high in space.

It looked as if everything in that building were run by such control boards in the hands of an authority aware of every motion, as if the building were flowing with channeled energy, functioning smoothly, soundlessly, a magnificent machine that nothing could destroy. Nobody paid any attention to the redheaded man who stopped in the lobby for a moment.

Howard Roark looked up at the tiled vault. He had never hated anyone. Somewhere in this building was its owner, the man who had made him feel his nearest approach to hatred.

Gail Wynand glanced at the small clock on his desk. In a few minutes he had an appointment with an architect. The interview, he thought, would not be difficult; he had held many such interviews in his life; he merely had to speak, he knew what he wanted to say, and nothing was required of the architect except a few sounds signifying understanding.

His glance went from the clock back to the sheets of proofs on his desk. He read an editorial by Alvah Scarret on the public feeding of squirrels in Central Park, and a column by Ellsworth Toohey on the great merits of an exhibition of paintings done by the workers of the City Department of Sanitation. A buzzer rang on his desk, and his secretary's voice said: "Mr. Howard Roark, Mr. Wynand."

"Okay," said Wynand, flicking the switch off. As his hand moved back, he noticed the row of buttons at the edge of his desk, bright little knobs with a color code of their own, each representing the end of a wire that stretched to some part of the building, each wire controlling some man, each man controlling many men under his orders, each group of men contributing to the final shape of words on paper to go into millions of homes, into millions of human brains — these little knobs of colored plastic, there under his fingers. But he had no time to let the thought amuse him, the door of his office was opening, he moved his hand away from the buttons.

Wynand was not certain that he missed a moment, that he did not rise at once as courtesy demanded, but remained seated, looking at the man who entered; perhaps he had risen immediately and it only seemed to him that a long time preceded his movement. Roark was not certain that he stopped when he entered the office, that he did not walk forward, but stood looking at the man behind the desk; perhaps there had been no break in his steps and it only seemed to him that he had stopped. But there had been a moment when both forgot the terms of immediate reality, when Wynand forgot his purpose in summoning this man, when Roark forgot that this man was Dominique's husband, when no door, desk or stretch of carpet existed, only the total awareness, for each, of the man before him, only two thoughts meeting in the middle of the room — "This is Gail Wynand" — "This is Howard Roark."

Then Wynand rose, his hand motioned in simple invitation to the chair beside his desk, Roark approached and sat down, and they did not notice that they had not greeted each other.

Wynand smiled, and said what he had never intended to say. He said very simply:

"I don't think you'll want to work for me."

"I want to work for you," said Roark, who had come here prepared to refuse.

"Have you seen the kind of things I've built?"

"Yes."

Wynand smiled. "This is different. It's not for my public. It's for me."

"You've never built anything for yourself before?"

"No — if one doesn't count the cage I have up on a roof and this old printing factory here. Can you tell me why I've never built a structure of my own, with the means of erecting a city if I wished? I don't know. I think you'd know." He forgot that he did not allow men he hired the presumption of personal speculation upon him.

"Because you've been unhappy," said Roark.

He said it simply, without insolence; as if nothing but total honesty were possible to him here. This was not the beginning of an interview, but the middle; it was like a continuation of something begun long ago. Wynand said:

"Make that clear."

"I think you understand."

"I want to hear you explain it."

"Most people build as they live — as a matter of routine and senseless accident. But a few understand that building is a great symbol. We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a statement of his life. If he doesn't build, when he has the means, it's because his life has not been what he wanted."

"You don't think it's preposterous to say that to me of all people?"

"No."

"I don't either." Roark smiled. "But you and I are the only two who'd say it. Either part of it: that I didn't have what I wanted or that I could be included among the few expected to understand any sort of great symbols. You don't want to retract that either?"

"No."

"How old are you?"

"Thirty-six."

"I owned most of the papers I have now — when I was thirty-six." He added: "I didn't mean that as any kind of a personal remark. I don't know why I said that. I just happened to think of it."

"What do you wish me to build for you?"

"My home."

Wynand felt that the two words had some impact on Roark apart from any normal meaning they could convey; he sensed it without reason; he wanted to ask: "What's the matter?" but couldn't, since Roark had really shown nothing.

"You were right in your diagnosis," said Wynand, "because you see, now I do want to build a house of my own. Now I'm not afraid of a visible shape for my life. If you want it said directly, as you did, now I'm happy."

"What kind of house?"

"In the country. I've purchased the site. An estate in Connecticut, five hundred acres. What kind of a house? You'll decide that."

"Did Mrs. Wynand choose me for the job?"

"No. Mrs. Wynand knows nothing about this. It was I who wanted to move out of the city, and she agreed. I did ask her to select the architect — my wife is the former Dominique Francon; she was once a writer on architecture. But she preferred to leave the choice to me. You want to know why I picked you? I took a long time to decide. I felt rather lost, at first. I had never heard of you. I didn't know any architects at all. I mean this literally — and I'm not forgetting the years I've spent in real estate, the things I've built and the imbeciles who built them for me. This is not a Stoneridge, this is — what did you call it? — a statement of my life? Then I saw Monadnock. It was the first thing that made me remember your name. But I gave myself a long test. I went around the country, looking at homes, hotels, all sorts of buildings. Every time I saw one I liked and asked who had designed it, the answer was always the same: Howard Roark. So I called you." He added: "Shall I tell you how much I admire your work?"

"Thank you," said Roark. He closed his eyes for an instant.

"You know, I didn't want to meet you."

"Why?"

"Have you heard about my art gallery?"

"Yes."

"I never meet the men whose work I love. The work means too much to me. I don't want the men to spoil it. They usually do. They're an anticlimax to their own talent. You're not. I don't mind talking to you. I told you this only because I want you to know that I respect very little in life, but I respect the things in my gallery, and your buildings, and man's capacity to produce work like that. Maybe it's the only religion I've ever had." He shrugged. "I think I've destroyed, perverted, corrupted just about everything that exists. But I've never touched that. Why are you looking at me like this?"

"I'm sorry. Please tell me about the house you want."

"I want it to be a palace — only I don't think palaces are very luxurious. They're so big, so promiscuously public. A small house is the true luxury. A residence for two people only — for my wife and me. It won't be necessary to allow for a family, we don't intend to have children. Nor for visitors, we don't intend to entertain. One guest room — in case we should need it — but not more than that. Living room, dining room, library, two studies, one bedroom. Servants' quarters, garage. That's the general idea. I'll give you the details later. The cost — whatever you need. The appearance — " He smiled, shrugging. "I've seen your buildings. The man who wants to tell you what a house should look like must either be able to design it better — or shut up. I'll say only that I want my house to have the Roark quality."

"What is that?"

"I think you understand."

"I want to hear you explain it."

"I think some buildings are cheap show-offs, all front, and some are cowards, apologizing for themselves in every brick, and some are the eternal unfit, botched, malicious and false. Your buildings have one sense above all — a sense of joy. Not a placid joy. A difficult, demanding kind of joy. The kind that makes one feel as if it were an achievement to experience it. One looks and thinks: I'm a better person if I can feel that."

Roark said slowly, not in the tone of an answer:

"I suppose it was inevitable."

"What?"

"That you would see that."

"Why do you say it as if you ... regretted my being able to see it?"

"I don't regret it."

"Listen, don't hold it against me — the things I've built before."

"I don't."

"It's all those Stoneridges and Noyes-Belmont Hotels — and Wynand papers — that made it possible for me to have a house by you. Isn't that a luxury worth achieving? Does it matter how? They were the means. You're the end."

"You don't have to justify yourself to me."

"I wasn't jus ... Yes, I think that's what I was doing."

"You don't need to. I wasn't thinking of what you've built."

"What were you thinking?"

"That I'm helpless against anyone who sees what you saw in my buildings."

"You felt you wanted help against me?"

"No. Only I don't feel helpless as a rule."

"I'm not prompted to justify myself as a rule, either. Then — it's all right, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"I must tell you much more about the house I want. I suppose an architect is like a father confessor — he must know everything about the people who are to live in his house, since what he gives them is more personal than their clothes or food. Please consider it in that spirit — and forgive me if you notice that this is difficult for me to say — I've never gone to confession. You see, I want this house because I'm very desperately in love with my wife ... What's the matter? Do you think it's an irrelevant statement?"

"No. Go on."

"I can't stand to see my wife among other people. It's not jealousy. It's much more and much worse. I can't stand to see her walking down the streets of a city. I can't share her, not even with shops, theaters, taxicabs or sidewalks. I must take her away. I must put her out of reach — where nothing can touch her, not in any sense. This house is to be a fortress. My architect is to be my guard."

Roark sat looking straight at him. He had to keep his eyes on Wynand in order to be able to listen. Wynand felt the effort in that glance; he did not recognize it as effort, only as strength; he felt himself supported by the glance; he found that nothing was hard to confess.

"This house is to be a prison. No, not quite that. A treasury — a vault to guard things too precious for sight. But it must be more. It must be a separate world, so beautiful that we'll never miss the one we left. A prison only by the power of its own perfection. Not bars and ramparts — but your talent standing as a wall between us and the world. That's what I want of you. And more. Have you ever built a temple?"

For a moment, Roark had no strength to answer; but he saw that the question was genuine; Wynand didn't know.

"Yes," said Roark.

"Then think of this commission as you would think of a temple. A, temple to Dominique Wynand ... I want you to meet her before you design it."

"I met Mrs. Wynand some years ago."

"You have? Then you understand."

"I do."

Wynand saw Roark's hand lying on the edge of his desk, the long fingers pressed to the glass, next to the proofs of the Banner. The proofs were folded carelessly; he saw the heading "One Small Voice" inside the page. He looked at Roark's hand. He thought he would like to have a bronze paperweight made of it and how beautiful it would look on his desk.

"Now you know what I want. Go ahead. Start at once. Drop anything else you're doing. I'll pay whatever you wish. I want that house by summer ... Oh, forgive me. Too much association with bad architects. I haven't asked whether you want to do it."

Roark's hand moved first; he took it off the desk.

"Yes," said Roark. "I'll do it."

Wynand saw the prints of the fingers left on the glass, distinct as if the skin had cut grooves in the surface and the grooves were

wet.

"How long will it take you?" Wynand asked.

"You'll have it by July."

"Of course you must see the site. I want to show it to you myself. Shall I drive you down there tomorrow morning?"

"If you wish."

"Be here at nine."

"Yes."

"Do you want me to draw up a contract? I have no idea how you prefer to work. As a rule, before I deal with a man in any matter, I make it a point to know everything about him from the day of his birth or earlier. I've never checked up on you. I simply forgot. It didn't seem necessary."

"I can answer any question you wish."

Wynand smiled and shook his head:

"No. There's nothing I need to ask you. Except about the business arrangements."

"I never make any conditions, except one: if you accept the preliminary drawings of the house, it is to be built as I designed it, without any alterations of any kind."

"Certainly. That's understood. I've heard you don't work otherwise. But will you mind if I don't give you any publicity on this house? I know it would help you professionally, but I want this building kept out of the newspapers."

"I won't mind that."

"Will you promise not to release pictures of it for publication?"

"I promise."

"Thank you. I'll make up for it. You may consider the Wynand papers as your personal press service. I'll give you all the plugging you wish on any other work of yours."

"I don't want any plugging."

Wynand laughed aloud. "What a thing to say in what a place! I don't think you have any idea how your fellow architects would have conducted this interview. I don't believe you were actually conscious at any time that you were speaking to Gail Wynand."

"I was," said Roark.

"This was my way of thanking you. I don't always like being Gail Wynand."

"I know that."

"I'm going to change my mind and ask you a personal question. You said you'd answer anything."

"I will."

"Have you always liked being Howard Roark?"

Roark smiled. The smile was amused, astonished, involuntarily contemptuous.

"You've answered," said Wynand.

Then he rose and said: "Nine o'clock tomorrow morning," extending his hand.

When Roark had gone, Wynand sat behind his desk, smiling. He moved his hand toward one of the plastic buttons — and stopped. He realized that he had to assume a different manner, his usual manner, that he could not speak as he had spoken in the last half-hour. Then he understood what had been strange about the interview: for the first time in his life he had spoken to a man without feeling the reluctance, the sense of pressure, the need of disguise he had always experienced when he spoke to people; there had been no strain and no need of strain; as if he had spoken to himself.

He pressed the button and said to his secretary:

"Tell the morgue to send me everything they have on Howard Roark."

"Guess what," said Alvah Scarret, his voice begging to be begged for his information.

Ellsworth Toohey waved a hand impatiently in a brushing-off motion, not raising his eyes from his desk.

"Go 'way, Alvah. I'm busy."

"No, but this is interesting, Ellsworth. Really, it's interesting. I know you'll want to know."

Toohey lifted his head and looked at him, the faint contraction of boredom in the corners of his eyes letting Scarret understand that this moment of attention was a favor; he drawled in a tone of emphasized patience:

"All right. What is it?"

Scarret saw nothing to resent in Toohey's manner. Toohey had treated him like that for the last year or longer. Scarret had not noticed the change, it was too late to resent it — it had become normal to them both.

Scarret smiled like a bright pupil who expects the teacher to praise him for discovering an error in the teacher's own textbook.

"Ellsworth, your private F.B.I. is slipping."

"What are you talking about?"

"Bet you don't know what Gail's been doing — and you always make such a point of keeping yourself informed."

"What don't I know?"

"Guess who was in his office today."

"My dear Alvah, I have no time for quiz games."

"You wouldn't guess in a thousand years."

"Very well, since the only way to get rid of you is to play the vaudeville stooge, I shall ask the proper question: Who was in dear Gail's office today?"

"Howard Roark."

Toohey turned to him full face, forgetting to dole out his attention, and said incredulously:

"No!"

"Yes!" said Scarret, proud of the effect.

"Well!" said Toohey and burst out laughing.

Scarret half smiled tentatively, puzzled, anxious to join in, but not quite certain of the cause for amusement.

"Yes, it's funny. But ... just exactly why, Ellsworth?"

"Oh, Alvah, it would take so long to tell you!"

"I had an idea it might ... "

"Haven't you any sense of the spectacular, Alvah? Don't you like fireworks? If you want to know what to expect, just think that the worst wars are religious wars between sects of the same religion or civil wars between brothers of the same race."

"I don't quite follow you."

"Oh, dear, I have so many followers. I brush them out of my hair."

"Well, I'm glad you're so cheerful about it, but I thought it's

bad."

"Of course it's bad. But not for us."

"But look: you know bow we've gone out on a limb, you particularly, on how this Roark is just about the worst architect in town, and if now our own boss hires him — isn't it going to be embarrassing?"

"Oh that? ... Oh, maybe ... "

"Well, I'm glad you take it that way."

"What was he doing in Wynand's office? Is it a commission?"

"That's what I don't know. Can't find out. Nobody knows."

"Have you heard of Mr. Wynand planning to build anything lately?"

"No. Have you?"

"No. I guess my F.B.I. is slipping. Oh, well, one does the best one can."

"But you know, Ellsworth, I had an idea. I had an idea where this might be very helpful to us indeed."

"What idea?"

"Ellsworth, Gail's been impossible lately."

Scarret uttered it solemnly, with the air of imparting a discovery. Toohey sat half smiling.

"Well, of course, you predicted it, Ellsworth. You were right. You're always right. I'll be damned if I can figure out just what's happening to him, whether it's Dominique or some sort of a change of life or what, but something's happening. Why does he get fits suddenly and start reading every damn line of every damn edition and raise hell for the silliest reasons? He's killed three of my best editorials lately — and he's never done that to me before. Never. You know what he said to me? He said: 'Motherhood is wonderful, Alvah, but for God's sake go easy on the bilge. There's a limit even for intellectual depravity.' What depravity? That was the sweetest Mother's Day editorial I ever put together. Honest, I was touched myself. Since when has he learned to talk about depravity? The other day, he called Jules Fougler a bargain-basement mind, right to his face, and threw his Sunday piece into the wastebasket. A swell piece, too — on the Workers' Theater. Jules Fougler, our best writer! No wonder Gail hasn't got a friend left in the place. If they hated his guts before, you ought to hear them now!"

"I've heard them."

"He's losing his grip, Ellsworth. I don't know what I'd do if it weren't for you and the swell bunch of people you picked. They're practically our whole actual working staff, those youngsters of yours, not our old sacred cows who're writing themselves out anyway. Those bright kids will keep the Banner going. But Gail ... Listen, last week he fired Dwight Carson. Now you know, I think that was significant. Of course Dwight was just a deadweight and a damn nuisance, but he was the first one of those special pets of Gail's, the boys who sold their souls. So, in a way, you see, I liked having Dwight around, it was all right, it was healthy, it was a relic of Gail's best days. I always said it was Gail's safety valve. And when he suddenly let Carson go — I didn't like it, Ellsworth. I didn't like it at all."

"What is this, Alvah? Are you telling me things I don't know, or is this just in the nature of letting off steam — do forgive the mixed metaphor — on my shoulder?"

"I guess so. I don't like to knock Gail, but I've been so damn mad for so long I'm fit to be tied. But here's what I'm driving at: This Howard Roark, what does he make you think of?"

"I could write a volume on that, Alvah. This is hardly the time to launch into such an undertaking."

"No, but I mean, what's the one thing we know about him? That's he's a crank and a freak and a fool, all right, but what else? That he's one of those fools you can't budge with love or money or a sixteen-inch gun. He's worse than Dwight Carson, worse than the whole lot of Gall's pets put together. Well? Get my point? What's Gail going to do when he comes up against that kind of a man?"

"One of several possible things."

"One thing only, if I know Gail, and I know Gail. That's why I feel kind of hopeful. This is what he's needed for a long time. A swig of his old medicine. The safety valve. He'll go out to break that guy's spine — and it will be good for Gail. The best thing in the world. Bring him back to normal ... That was my idea, Ellsworth." He waited, saw no complementary enthusiasm on Toohey's face and finished lamely: "Well, I might be wrong ... I don't know ... It might mean nothing at all ... I just thought that was psychology ... "

"That's what it was, Alvah."

"Then you think it'll work that way?"

"It might. Or it might be much worse than anything you imagine. But it's of no importance to us any more. Because you see, Alvah, as far as the Banner is concerned, if it came to a showdown between us and our boss, we don't have to be afraid of Mr. Gail Wynand any longer."

When the boy from the morgue entered, carrying a thick envelope of clippings, Wynand looked up from his desk and said:

"That much? I didn't know he was so famous."

"Well, it's the Stoddard trial, Mr. Wynand."

The boy stopped. There was nothing wrong — only the ridges on Wynand's forehead, and he did not know Wynand well enough to know what these meant. He wondered what made him feel as if he should be afraid. After a moment, Wynand said:

"All right. Thank you."

The boy deposited the envelope on the glass surface of the desk, and walked out.

Wynand sat looking at the bulging shape of yellow paper. He saw it reflected in the glass, as if the bulk had eaten through the surface and grown roots to his desk. He looked at the walls of his office and he wondered whether they contained a power which could save him from opening that envelope.

Then he pulled himself erect, he put both forearms in a straight line along the edge of the desk, his fingers stretched and meeting, he looked down, past his nostrils, at the surface of the desk, he sat for a moment, grave, proud, collected, like the angular mummy of a Pharaoh, then he moved one hand, pulled the envelope forward, opened it and began to read.

"Sacrilege" by Ellsworth M. Toohey — "The Churches of our Childhood" by Alvah Scarret — editorials, sermons, speeches, statements, letters to the editor, the Banner unleashed full-blast, photographs, cartoons, interviews, resolutions of protest, letters to the editor.

He read every word, methodically, his hands on the edge of the desk, fingers meeting, not lifting the clippings, not touching them, reading them as they lay on top of the pile, moving a hand only to turn a clipping over and read the one beneath, moving the hand with a mechanical perfection of timing, the fingers rising as his eyes took the last word, not allowing the clipping to remain in sight a second longer than necessary. But he stopped for a long time to look at the photographs of the Stoddard Temple. He stopped longer to look at one of Roark's pictures, the picture of exaltation captioned "Are you happy, Mr. Superman?" He tore it from the story it illustrated, and slipped it into his desk drawer. Then he continued reading.

The trial — the testimony of Ellsworth M. Toohey — of Peter Keating — of Ralston Holcombe — of Gordon L. Prescott — no quotations from the testimony of Dominique Francon, only a brief report. "The defense rests." A few mentions in "One Small Voice" — then a gap — the next clipping dated three years later — Monadnock Valley.

It was late when he finished reading. His secretaries had left. He felt the sense of empty rooms and halls around him. But he heard the sound of presses: a low, rumbling vibration that went through every room. He had always liked that — the sound of the building's heart, beating. He listened. They were running off tomorrow's Banner. He sat without moving for a long time.

3.

ROARK and Wynand stood on the top of a hill, looking over a spread of land that sloped away in a long gradual curve. Bare trees rose on the hilltop and descended to the shore of a lake, their branches geometrical compositions cut through the air. The color of the sky, a clear, fragile blue-green, made the air colder. The cold washed the colors of the earth, revealing that they were not colors but only the elements from which color was to come, the dead brown not a full brown but a future green, the tired purple an overture to flame, the gray a prelude to gold. The earth was like the outline of a great story, like the steel frame of a building — to be filled and finished, holding all the splendor of the future in naked simplification.

"Where do you think the house should stand?" asked Wynand.

"Here," said Roark.

"I hoped you'd choose this."

Wynand had driven his car from the city, and they had walked for two hours down the paths of his new estate, through deserted lanes, through a forest, past the lake, to the hill. Now Wynand waited, while Roark stood looking at the countryside spread under his feet. Wynand wondered what reins this man was gathering from all the points of the landscape into his hand.

When Roark turned to him, Wynand asked:

"May I speak to you now?"

"Of course," Roark smiled, amused by the deference which he

had not requested.

Wynand's voice sounded clear and brittle, like the color of the sky above them, with the same quality of ice-green radiance: "Why did you accept this commission?"

"Because I'm an architect for hire."

"You know what I mean."

"I'm not sure I do."

"Don't you hate my guts?"

"No. Why should I?"

"You want me to speak of it first?"

"Of what?"

"The Stoddard Temple."

Roark smiled. "So you did check up on me since yesterday."

"I read our clippings." He waited, but Roark said nothing. "All of them." His voice was harsh, half defiance, half plea. "Everything we said about you." The calm of Roark's face drove him to fury. He went on, giving slow, full value to each word: "We called you an incompetent fool, a tyro, a charlatan, a swindler, an egomaniac ... "

"Stop torturing yourself."

Wynand closed his eyes, as if Roark had struck him. In a moment, he said:

"Mr. Roark, you don't know me very well. You might as well learn this: I don't apologize. I never apologize for any of my actions."

"What made you think of apology? I haven't asked for it."

"I stand by every one of those descriptive terms. I stand by every word printed in the Banner."

"I haven't asked you to repudiate it."

"I know what you think. You understood that I didn't know about the Stoddard Temple yesterday. I had forgotten the name of the architect involved. You concluded it wasn't I who led that campaign against you. You're right, it wasn't I, I was away at the time. But you don't understand that the campaign was in the true and proper spirit of the Banner. It was in strict accordance with the Banner's function. No one is responsible for it but me. Alvah Scarret was doing only what I taught him. Had I been in town, I would have done the same."

"That's your privilege."

"You don't believe I would have done it?"

"No."

"I haven't asked you for compliments and I haven't asked you for pity."

"I can't do what you're asking for."

"What do you think I'm asking?"

"That I slap your face."

"Why don't you?"

"I can't pretend an anger I don't feel," said Roark. "It's not pity. It's much more cruel than anything I could do. Only I'm not doing it in order to be cruel. If I slapped your face, you'd forgive me for the Stoddard Temple."

"Is it you who should seek forgiveness?"

"No. You wish I did. You know that there's an act of forgiveness involved. You're not clear about the actors. You wish I would forgive you — or demand payment, which is the same thing — and you believe that that would close the record. But, you see, I have nothing to do with it. I'm not one of the actors. It doesn't matter what I do or feel about it now. You're not thinking of me. I can't help you. I'm not the person you're afraid of just now."

"Who is?"

"Yourself."

"Who gave you the right to say all this?"

"You did."

"Well, go on."

"Do you wish the rest?"

"Go on."

"I think it hurts you to know that you've made me suffer. You wish you hadn't. And yet there's something that frightens you more. The knowledge that I haven't suffered at all."

"Go on."

"The knowledge that I'm neither kind nor generous now, but simply indifferent. It frightens you, because you know that things like the Stoddard Temple always require payment — and you see that I'm not paying for it. You were astonished that I accepted this commission. Do you think my acceptance required courage? You needed far greater courage to hire me. You see, this is what I think of the Stoddard Temple. I'm through with it. You're not."

Wynand let his fingers fall open, palms out. His shoulders sagged a little, relaxing. He said very simply:

"All right. It's true. All of it."

Then he stood straight, but with a kind of quiet resignation, as if his body were consciously made vulnerable.

"I hope you know you've given me a beating in your own way," he said.

"Yes. And you've taken it. So you've accomplished what you wanted. Shall we say we're even and forget the Stoddard Temple?"

"You're very wise or I've been very obvious. Either is your achievement. Nobody's ever caused me to become obvious before."

"Shall I still do what you want?"

"What do you think I want now?"

"Personal recognition from me. It's my turn to give in, isn't it?"

"You're appallingly honest, aren't you?"

"Why shouldn't I be? I can't give you the recognition of having made me suffer. But you'll take the substitute of having given me pleasure, won't you? All right, then. I'm glad you like me. I think you know this is as much an exception for me as your taking a beating. I don't usually care whether I'm liked or not. I do care this time. I'm glad."

Wynand laughed aloud. "You're as innocent and presumptuous as an emperor. When you confer honors you merely exalt yourself. What in hell made you think I liked you?"

"Now you don't want any explanations of that. You've reproached me once for causing you to be obvious."

Wynand sat down on a fallen tree trunk. He said nothing; but his movement was an invitation and a demand. Roark sat down beside him; Roark's face was sober, but the trace of a smile remained, amused and watchful, as if every word he heard were not a disclosure but a confirmation.

"You've come up from nothing, haven't you?" Wynand asked. "You came from a poor family."

"Yes. How did you know that?"

"Just because it feels like a presumption — the thought of handing you anything: a compliment, an idea or a fortune. I started at the bottom, too. Who was your father?"

"A steel puddler."

"Mine was a longshoreman. Did you hold all sorts of funny jobs when you were a child?"

"All sorts. Mostly in the building trades."

"I did worse than that. I did just about everything. What job did you like best?"

"Catching rivets, on steel structures."

"I liked being a bootblack on a Hudson ferry. I should have hated that, but I didn't. I don't remember the people at all. I remember the city. The city — always there, on the shore, spread out, waiting, as if I were tied to it by a rubber band. The band would stretch and carry me away, to the other shore, but it would always snap back and I would return. It gave me the feeling that I'd never escaped from that city — and it would never escape from me."

Roark knew that Wynand seldom spoke of his childhood, by the quality of his words; they were bright and hesitant, untarnished by usage, like coins that had not passed through many hands.

"Were you ever actually homeless and starving?" Wynand asked.

"A few times."

"Did you mind that?"

"No."

"I didn't either. I minded something else. Did you want to scream, when you were a child, seeing nothing but fat ineptitude around you, knowing how many things could be done and done so well, but having no power to do them? Having no power to blast the empty skulls around you? Having to take orders — and that's bad enough — but to take orders from your inferiors! Have you felt that?"

"Yes."

"Did you drive the anger back inside of you, and store it, and decide to let yourself be torn to pieces if necessary, but reach the day when you'd rule those people and all people and everything around you?"

"No."

"You didn't? You let yourself forget?"

"No. I hate incompetence. I think it's probably the only thing I do hate. But it didn't make me want to rule people. Nor to teach them anything. It made me want to do my own work in my own way and let myself be torn to pieces if necessary."

"And you were?"

"No. Not in any way that counts."

"You don't mind looking back? At anything?"

"No."

"I do. There was one night. I was beaten and I crawled to a door — I remember the pavement — it was right under my nostrils — I can still see it — there were veins in the stone and white spots — I had to make sure that that pavement moved — I couldn't feel whether I was moving or not — but I could tell by the pavement — I had to see that those veins and spots changed — I had to reach the next pattern or the crack six inches away — it took a long time — and I knew it was blood under my stomach ... "

His voice had no tone of self-pity; it was simple, impersonal, with a faint sound of wonder. Roark said: "I'd like to help you."

Wynand smiled slowly, not gaily. "I believe you could. I even believe that it would be proper. Two days ago I would have murdered anyone who'd think of me as an object for help ... You know, of course, that that night's not what I hate in my past. Not what I dread to look back on. It was only the least offensive to mention. The other things can't be talked about."

"I know. I meant the other things."

"What are they? You name them."

"The Stoddard Temple."

"You want to help me with that?"

"Yes."

"You're a damn fool. Don't you realize ... "

"Don't you realize I'm doing it already?"

"How?"

"By building this house for you."

Roark saw the slanting ridges on Wynand's forehead. Wynand's eyes seemed whiter than usual, as if the blue had ebbed from the iris, two white ovals, luminous on his face. He said:

"And getting a fat commission check for it."

He saw Roark's smile, suppressed before it appeared fully. The smile would have said that this sudden insult was a declaration of surrender, more eloquent than the speeches of confidence; the suppression said that Roark would not help him over this particular moment.

"Why, of course," said Roark calmly.

Wynand got up. "Let's go. We're wasting time. I have more important things to do at the office."

They did not speak on their way back to the city. Wynand drove his car at ninety miles an hour. The speed made two solid walls of blurred motion on the sides of the road; as if they were flying down a long, closed, silent corridor.

He stopped at the entrance to the Cord Building and let Roark out. He said:

"You're free to go back to that site as often as you wish, Mr. Roark. I don't have to go with you. You can get the surveys and all the information you need from my office. Please do not call on me again until it is necessary. I shall be very busy. Let me know when the first drawings are ready."

When the drawings were ready, Roark telephoned Wynand's office. He had not spoken to Wynand for a month. "Please hold the wire, Mr. Roark," said Wynand's secretary. He waited. The secretary's voice came back and informed him that Mr. Wynand wished the drawings brought to his office that afternoon; she gave the hour, Wynand would not answer in person.

When Roark entered the office, Wynand said: "How do you do, Mr. Roark," his voice gracious and formal. No memory of intimacy remained on his blank, courteous face.

Roark handed him the plans of the house and a large perspective drawing. Wynand studied each sheet. He held the drawing for a long time. Then he looked up.

"I am very much impressed, Mr. Roark." The voice was offensively correct. "I have been quite impressed by you from the first. I have thought it over and I want to make a special deal with you."

His glance was directed at Roark with a soft emphasis, almost with tenderness; as if he were showing that he wished to treat Roark cautiously, to spare him intact for a purpose of his own. He lifted the sketch and held it up between two fingers, letting all the light hit it straight on; the white sheet glowed as a reflector for a moment, pushing the black pencil lines eloquently forward.

"You want to see this house erected?" Wynand asked softly. "You want it very much?"

"Yes," said Roark.

Wynand did not move his hand, only parted his fingers and let the cardboard drop face down on the desk.

"It will be erected, Mr. Roark. Just as you designed it. Just as it stands on this sketch. On one condition."

Roark sat leaning back, his hands in his pockets, attentive, waiting.

"You don't want to ask me what condition, Mr. Roark? Very well, I'll tell you. I shall accept this house on condition that you accept the deal I offer you. I wish to sign a contract whereby you will be sole architect for any building I undertake to erect in the future. As you realize, this would be quite an assignment. I venture to say I control more structural work than any other single person in the country. Every man in your profession has wanted to be known as my exclusive architect. I am offering it to you. In exchange, you will have to submit yourself to certain conditions. Before I name them, I'd like to point out some of the consequences, should you refuse. As you may have heard, I do not like to be refused. The power I hold can work two ways. It would be easy for me to arrange that no commission be available to you anywhere in this country. You have a small following of your own, but no prospective employer can withstand the kind of pressure I am in a position to exert. You have gone through wasted periods of your life before. They were nothing, compared to the blockade I can impose. You might have to go back to a granite quarry — oh yes, I know about that, summer of 1928, the Francon quarry in Connecticut — how? — private detectives, Mr. Roark — you might have to go back to a granite quarry, only I shall see to it that the quarries also will be closed to you. Now I'll tell you what I want of you."

In all the gossip about Gail Wynand, no one had ever mentioned the expression of his face as it was in this moment. The few men who had seen it did not talk about it. Of these men, Dwight Carson had been the first. Wynand's lips were parted, his eyes brilliant. It was an expression of sensual pleasure derived from agony — the agony of his victim or his own, or both.

"I want you to design all my future commercial structures — as the public wishes commercial structures to be designed. You'll build Colonial houses, Rococo hotels and semi-Grecian office buildings. You'll exercise your matchless ingenuity within forms chosen by the taste of the people — and you'll make money for me. You'll take your spectacular talent and make it obedient Originality and subservience together. They call it harmony. You'll create in your sphere what the Banner is in mine. Do you think it took no talent to create the Banner? Such will be your future career. But the house you've designed for me shall be erected as you designed it. It will be the last Roark building to rise on earth. Nobody will have one after mine. You've read about ancient rulers who put to death the architect of their palace, that no others might equal the glory he had given them. They killed the architect or cut his eyes out. Modern methods are different. For the rest of your life you'll obey the will of the majority. I shan't attempt to offer you any arguments. I am merely stating an alternative. You're the kind of man who can understand plain language. You have a simple choice: if you refuse, you'll never build anything again; if you accept, you'll build this house which you want so much to see erected, and a great many other houses which you won't like, but which will make money for both of us. For the rest of your life you'll design rental developments, such as Stoneridge. That is what I want."

He leaned forward, waiting for one of the reactions he knew well and enjoyed: a look of anger, or indignation, or ferocious pride.

"Why, of course," said Roark gaily. "I'll be glad to do it. That's easy."

He reached over, took a pencil and the first piece of paper he saw on Wynand's desk — a letter with an imposing letterhead. He drew rapidly on the back of the letter. The motion of his hand was smooth and confident. Wynand looked at his face bent over the paper; he saw the unwrinkled forehead, the straight line of the eyebrows, attentive, but untroubled by effort.

Roark raised his head and threw the paper to Wynand across the desk.

"Is this what you want?"

Wynand's house stood drawn on the paper — with Colonial porches, a gambrel roof, two massive chimneys, a few little pilasters, a few porthole windows. It was not a parody, it was a serious job of adaptation in what any professor would have called excellent taste.

"Good God, no!" The gasp was instinctive and immediate.

"Then shut up," said Roark, "and don't ever let me hear any architectural suggestions."

Wynand slumped down in his chair and laughed. He laughed for a long time, unable to stop. It was not a happy sound.

Roark shook his head wearily. "You knew better than that. And it's such an old one to me. My antisocial stubbornness is so well known that I didn't think anyone would waste time trying to tempt me again."

"Howard. I meant it. Until I saw this."

"I knew you meant it. I didn't think you could be such a fool."

"You knew you were taking a terrible kind of chance?"

"None at all. I had an ally I could trust."

"What? Your integrity?"

"Yours, Gail."

Wynand sat looking down at the surface of his desk. After a while he said:

"You're wrong about that."

"I don't think so."

Wynand lifted his head; he looked tired; he sounded indifferent.

"It was your method of the Stoddard trial again, wasn't it? "The defense rests.' ... I wish I had been in the courtroom to hear that sentence ... You did throw the trial back at me again, didn't you?"

"Call it that."

"But this time, you won. I suppose you know I'm not glad that you won."

"I know you're not."

"Don't think it was one of those temptations when you tempt just to test your victim and are happy to be beaten, and smile and say, well, at last, here's the kind of man I want. Don't imagine that. Don't make that excuse for me."

"I'm not. I know what you wanted."

"I wouldn't have lost so easily before. This would have been only the beginning. I know I can try further. I don't want to try. Not because you'd probably hold out to the end. But because I wouldn't hold out. No, I'm not glad and I'm not grateful to you for this ... But it doesn't matter ... "

"Gail, how much lying to yourself are you actually capable of?"

"I'm not lying. Everything I just told you is true. I thought you understood it."

"Everything you just told me — yes. I wasn't thinking of that."

"You're wrong in what you're thinking. You're wrong in remaining here."

"Do you wish to throw me out?"

"You know I can't."

Wynand's glance moved from Roark to the drawing of the house lying face down on his desk. He hesitated for a moment, looking at the blank cardboard, then turned it over. He asked softly:

"Shall I tell you now what I think of this?"

"You've told me."

"Howard, you spoke about a house as a statement of my life. Do you think my life deserves a statement like this?"

"Yes."

"Is this your honest judgment?"

"My honest judgment, Gail. My most sincere one. My final one. No matter what might happen between us in the future."

Wynand put the drawing down and sat studying the plans for a long time. When he raised his head, he looked calm and normal.

"Why did you stay away from here?" he asked. "You were busy with private detectives." Wynand laughed. "Oh that? I couldn't resist my old bad habits and I was curious. Now I know everything about you — except the women in your life. Either you've been very discreet or there haven't been many. No information available on that anywhere."

"There haven't been many."

"I think I missed you. It was a kind of substitute — gathering the details of your past. Why did you actually stay away?"

"You told me to."

"Are you always so meek about taking orders?"

"When I find it advisable."

"Well, here's an order — hope you place it among the advisable ones: come to have dinner with us tonight. I'll take this drawing home to show my wife. I've told her nothing about the house so far."

"You haven't told her?"

"No. I want her to see this. And I want you to meet her. I know she hasn't been kind to you in the past — I read what she wrote about you. But it's so long ago. I hope it doesn't matter now."

"No, it doesn't matter."

"Then will you come?"

"Yes."

4.

DOMINIQUE stood at the glass door of her room. Wynand saw the starlight on the ice sheets of the roof garden outside. He saw its reflection touching the outline of her profile, a faint radiance on her eyelids, on the planes of her cheeks. He thought that this was the illumination proper to her face. She turned to him slowly, and the light became an edge around the pale straight mass of her hair. She smiled as she had always smiled at him, a quiet greeting of understanding.

"What's the matter, Gail?"

"Good evening, dear. Why?"

"You look happy. That's not the word. But it's the nearest."

"'Light' is nearer. I feel light, thirty years lighter. Not that I'd want to be what I was thirty years ago. One never does. What the feeling means is only a sense of being carried back intact, as one is now, back to the beginning. It's quite illogical and impossible and wonderful."

"What the feeling usually means is that you've met someone. A woman as a rule."

"I have. Not a woman. A man. Dominique, you're very beautiful tonight. But I always say that. It's not what I wanted to say. It's this: I am very happy tonight that you're so beautiful."

"What is it, Gail?"

"Nothing. Only a feeling of how much is unimportant and how easy it is to live."

He took her hand and held it to his lips.

"Dominique, I've never stopped thinking it's a miracle that our marriage has lasted. Now I believe that it won't be broken. By anything or anyone." She leaned back against the glass pane. "I have a present for you — don't remind me it's the sentence I use more often than any other. I will have a present for you by the end of this summer. Our house."

"The house? You haven't spoken of it for so long, I thought you had forgotten."

"I've thought of nothing else for the last six months. You haven't changed your mind? You do want to move out of the city?"

"Yes, Gail, if you want it so much. Have you decided on an architect?"

"I've done more than that. I have the drawing of the house to show you."

"Oh, I'd like to see it."

"It's in my study. Come on. I want you to see it."

She smiled and closed her fingers over his wrist, a brief pressure, like a caress of encouragement, then she followed him. He threw the door of his study open and let her enter first. The light was on and the drawing stood propped on his desk, facing the door.

She stopped, her hands behind her, palms flattened against the doorjamb. She was too far away to see the signature, but she knew the work and the only man who could have designed that house.

Her shoulders moved, describing a circle, twisting slowly, as if she were tied to a pole, had abandoned hope of escape, and only her body made a last, instinctive gesture of protest.

She thought, were she lying in bed in Roark's arms in the sight of Gail Wynand, the violation would be less terrible; this drawing, more personal than Roark's body, created in answer to a matching force that came from Gail Wynand, was a violation of her, of Roark, of Wynand — and yet, she knew suddenly that it was the inevitable.

"No," she whispered, "things like that are never a coincidence."

"What?"

But she held up her hand, softly pushing back all conversation, and she walked to the drawing, her steps soundless on the carpet. She saw the sharp signature in the corner — "Howard Roark." It was less terrifying than the shape of the house; it was a thin point of support, almost a greeting.

"Dominique?"

She turned her face to him. He saw her answer. He said:

"I knew you'd like it. Forgive the inadequacy. We're stuck for words tonight."

She walked to the davenport and sat down; she let her back press against the cushions; it helped to sit straight. She kept her eyes on Wynand. He stood before her, leaning on the mantelpiece, half turned away, looking at the drawing. She could not escape that drawing; Wynand's face was like a mirror of it.

"You've seen him, Gail?"

"Whom?"

"The architect."

"Of course I've seen him. Not an hour ago."

"When did you first meet him?"

"Last month."

"You knew him all this time? ... Every evening ... when you came home ... at the dinner table ... "

"You mean, why didn't I tell you? I wanted to have the sketch to show you. I saw the house like this, but I couldn't explain it. I didn't think anyone would ever understand what I wanted and design it. He did."

"Who?"

"Howard Roark."

She had wanted to hear the name pronounced by Gail Wynand.

"How did you happen to choose him, Gail?"

"I looked all over the country. Every building I liked had been done by him."

She nodded slowly.

"Dominique, I take it for granted you don't care about it any more, but I know that I picked the one architect you spent all your time denouncing when you were on the Banner."

"You read that?"

"I read it. You had an odd way of doing it. It was obvious that you admired his work and hated him personally. But you defended him at the Stoddard trial."

"Yes."

"You even worked for him once. That statue, Dominique, it was made for his temple."

"Yes."

"It's strange. You lost your job on the Banner for defending him. I didn't know it when I chose him. I didn't know about that trial. I had forgotten his name. Dominique, in a way, it's he who gave you to me. That statue — from his temple. And now he's going to give me this house. Dominique, why did you hate him?"

"I didn't hate him ... It was so long ago ... "

"I suppose none of that matters now, does it?" He pointed to the drawing.

"I haven't seen him for years."

"You're going to see him in about an hour. He's coming here for dinner."

She moved her hand, tracing a spiral on the arm of the davenport, to convince herself that she could.

"Here?"

"Yes."

"You've asked him for dinner?"

He smiled; he remembered his resentment against the presence of guests in their house. He said: "This is different. I want him here. I don't think you remember him well — or you wouldn't be astonished."

She got up.

"All right, Gail. I'll give the orders. Then I'll get dressed."

They faced each other across the drawing room of Gail Wynand's penthouse. She thought how simple it was. He had always been here. He had been the motive power of every step she had taken in these rooms. He had brought her here and now he had come to claim this place. She was looking at him. She was seeing him as she had seen him on the morning when she awakened in his bed for the last time. She knew that neither his clothes nor the years stood between her and the living intactness of that memory. She thought this had been inevitable from the first, from the instant when she had looked down at him on the ledge of a quarry — it had to come like this, in Gail Wynand's house — and now she felt the peace of finality, knowing that her share of decision had ended; she had been the one who acted, but he would act from now on.

She stood straight, her head level; the planes of her face had a military cleanliness of precision and a feminine fragility; her hands hung still, composed by her sides, parallel with the long straight lines of her black dress.

"How do you do, Mr. Roark."

"How do you do, Mrs. Wynand."

"May I thank you for the house you have designed for us? It is the most beautiful of your buildings."

"It had to be, by the nature of the assignment, Mrs. Wynand."

She turned her head slowly.

"How did you present the assignment to Mr. Roark, Gail?"

"Just as I spoke of it to you."

She thought of what Roark had heard from Wynand, and had accepted. She moved to sit down; the two men followed her example. Roark said:

"If you like the house, the first achievement was Mr. Wynand's conception of it."

She asked: "Are you sharing the credit with a client?"

"Yes, in a way."

"I believe this contradicts what I remember of your professional convictions."

"But supports my personal ones."

"I'm not sure I ever understood that."

"I believe in conflict, Mrs. Wynand."

"Was there a conflict involved in designing this house?"

"The desire not to be influenced by my client."

"In what way?"

"I have liked working for some people and did not like working for others. But neither mattered. This time, I knew that the house would be what it became only because it was being done for Mr. Wynand. I had to overcome this. Or rather, I had to work with it and against it. It was the best way of working. The house had to surpass the architect, the client and the future tenant. It did."

"But the house — it's you, Howard," said Wynand. "It's still you."

It was the first sign of emotion on her face, a quiet shock, when she heard the "Howard." Wynand did not notice it. Roark did. He glanced at her — his first glance of personal contact. She could read no comment in it — only a conscious affirmation of the thought that had shocked her.

"Thank you for understanding that, Gail," he answered.

She was not certain whether she had heard him stressing the name.

"It's strange," said Wynand. "I am the most offensively possessive man on earth. I do something to things. Let me pick up an ash tray from a dime-store counter, pay for it and put it in my pocket — and it becomes a special kind of ash tray, unlike any on earth, because it's mine. It's an extra quality in the thing, like a sort of halo. I feel that about everything I own. From my overcoat — to the oldest linotype in the composing room — to the copies of the Banner on newsstands — to this penthouse — to my wife. And I've never wanted to own anything as much as I want this house you're going to build for me, Howard. I will probably be jealous of Dominique living in it — I can be quite insane about things like that. And yet — I don't feel that I'll own it, because no matter what I do or say, it's still yours. It will always be yours."

"It has to be mine," said Roark. "But in another sense, Gail, you own that house and everything else I've built. You own every structure you've stopped before and heard yourself answering."

"In what sense?"

"In the sense of that personal answer. What you feel in the presence of a thing you admire is just one word — 'Yes.' The affirmation, the acceptance, the sign of admittance. And that 'Yes' is more than an answer to one thing, it's a kind of 'Amen' to life, to the earth that holds this thing, to the thought that created it, to yourself for being able to see it. But the ability to say 'Yes' or 'No' is the essence of all ownership. It's your ownership of your own ego. Your soul, if you wish. Your soul has a single basic function — the act of valuing. 'Yes' or 'No,' 'I wish' or 'I do not wish.' You can't say 'Yes' without saying 'I.' There's no affirmation without the one who affirms. In this sense, everything to which you grant your love is yours."

"In this sense, you share things with others?"

"No. It's not sharing. When I listen to a symphony I love, I don't get from it what the composer got. His 'Yes' was different from mine. He could have no concern for mine and no exact conception of it. That answer is too personal to each man But in giving himself what he wanted, he gave me a great experience. I'm alone when I design a house, Gail, and you can never know the way in which I own it. But if you said you own 'Amen' to it — it's also yours. And I'm glad it's yours."

Wynand said, smiling:

"I like to think that. That I own Monadnock and the Enright House and the Cord Building ... "

"And the Stoddard Temple," said Dominique.

She had listened to them. She felt numb. Wynand had never spoken like this to any guest in their house; Roark had never spoken like this to any client. She knew that the numbness would break into anger, denial, indignation later; now it was only a cutting sound in her voice, a sound to destroy what she had heard.

She thought that she succeeded. Wynand answered, the word dropping heavily:

"Yes."

"Forget the Stoddard Temple, Gail," said Roark. There was such a simple, careless gaiety in his voice that no solemn dispensation could have been more effective.

"Yes, Howard," said Wynand, smiling.

She saw Roark's eyes turned to her.

"I have not thanked you, Mrs. Wynand, for accepting me as your architect. I know that Mr. Wynand chose me and you could have refused my services. I wanted to tell you that I'm glad you didn't."

She thought, I believe it because none of this can be believed; I'll accept anything tonight; I'm looking at him.

She said, courteously indifferent: "Wouldn't it be a reflection on my judgment to suppose that I would wish to reject a house you had designed, Mr. Roark?" She thought that nothing she said aloud could matter tonight.

Wynand asked:

"Howard, that 'Yes' — once granted, can it be withdrawn?"

She wanted to laugh in incredulous anger. It was Wynand's voice that had asked this; it should have been hers. He must look at me when he answers, she thought; he must look at me.

"Never," Roark answered, looking at Wynand.

"There's so much nonsense about human inconstancy and the transience of all emotions," said Wynand. "I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place. There are books I liked at the age of sixteen. I still like them."

The butler entered, carrying a tray of cocktails. Holding her glass, she watched Roark take his off the tray. She thought: At this moment the glass stem between his fingers feels just like the one between mine; we have this much in common ... Wynand stood, holding a glass, looking at Roark with a strange kind of incredulous wonder, not like a host, like an owner who cannot quite believe his ownership of his prize possession ... She thought: I'm not insane. I'm only hysterical, but it's quite all right, I'm saying something, I don't know what it is, but it must be all right, they are both listening and answering, Gail is smiling, I must be saying the proper things ...

Dinner was announced and she rose obediently; she led the way to the dining room, like a graceful animal given poise by conditioned reflexes. She sat at the head of the table, between the two men facing each other at her sides. She watched the silverware in Roark's fingers, the pieces of polished metal with the initials "D W." She thought: I have done this so many times — I am the gracious Mrs. Gail Wynand — there were Senators, judges, presidents of insurance companies, sitting at dinner in that place at my right — and this is what I was being trained for, this is why Gail has been rising through tortured years to the position of entertaining Senators and judges at dinner — for the purpose of reaching an evening when the guest facing him would be Howard Roark.

Wynand spoke about the newspaper business; he showed no reluctance to discuss it with Roark, and she pronounced a few sentences when it seemed necessary. Her voice had a luminous simplicity; she was being carried along, unresisting, any personal reaction would be superfluous, even pain or fear. She thought, if in the flow of conversation Wynand's next sentence should be: "You've slept with him," she would answer: "Yes, Gail, of course," just as simply. But Wynand seldom looked at her; when he did, she knew by his face that hers was normal.

Afterward, they were in the drawing room again, and she saw Roark standing at the window, against the lights of the city. She thought: Gail built this place as a token of his own victory — to have the city always before him — the city where he did run things at last. But this is what it had really been built for — to have Roark stand at that window — and I think Gail knows it tonight — Roark's body blocking miles out of that perspective, with only a few dots of fire and a few cubes of lighted glass left visible around the outline of his figure. He was smoking and she watched his cigarette moving slowly against the black sky, as he put it between his lips, then held it extended in his fingers, and she thought: they are only sparks from his cigarette, those points glittering in space behind him.

She said softly: "Gail always liked to look at the city at night. He was in love with skyscrapers."

Then she noticed she had used the past tense, and wondered why.

She did not remember what she said when they spoke about the new house. Wynand brought the drawings from his study, spread the plans on a table, and the three of them stood bent over the plans together. Roark's pencil moved, pointing, across the hard geometrical patterns of thin black lines on white sheets. She heard his voice, close to her, explaining. They did not speak of beauty and affirmation, but of closets, stairways, pantries, bathrooms. Roark asked her whether she found the arrangements convenient. She thought it was strange that they all spoke as if they really believed she would ever live in this house.

When Roark had gone, she heard Wynand asking her:

"What do you think of him?"

She felt something angry and dangerous, like a single, sudden twist within her, and she said, half in fear, half in deliberate invitation:

"Doesn't he remind you of Dwight Carson?"

"Oh, forget Dwight Carson!"

Wynand's voice, refusing earnestness, refusing guilt, had sounded exactly like the voice that had said: "Forget the Stoddard Temple."

The secretary in the reception room looked, startled, at the patrician gentleman whose face she had seen so often in the papers.

"Gail Wynand," he said, inclining his head in self-introduction. "I should like to see Mr. Roark. If he is not busy. Please do not disturb him if he is. I had no appointment."

She had never expected Wynand to come to an office unannounced and to ask admittance in that tone of grave deference.

She announced the visitor. Roark came out into the reception room, smiling, as if he found nothing unusual in this call.

"Hello, Gail. Come in."

"Hello, Howard."

He followed Roark to the office. Beyond the broad windows the darkness of late afternoon dissolved the city; it was snowing; black specks whirled furiously across the lights.

"I don't want to interrupt if you're busy, Howard. This is not important." He had not seen Roark for five days, since the dinner.

"I'm not busy. Take your coat off. Shall I have the drawings

brought in?"

"No. I don't want to talk about the house. Actually, I came without any reason at all. I was down at my office all day, got slightly sick of it, and felt like coming here. What are you grinning about?"

"Nothing. Only you said that it wasn't important."

Wynand looked at him, smiled and nodded.

He sat down on the edge of Roark's desk, with an ease which he had never felt in his own office, his hands in his pockets, one leg swinging.

"It's almost useless to talk to you, Howard. I always feel as if I were reading to you a carbon copy of myself and you've already seen the original. You seem to hear everything I say a minute in advance. We're unsynchronized."

"You call that unsynchronized?"

"All right. Too well synchronized." His eyes were moving slowly over the room. "If we own the things to which we say 'Yes,' then I own this office?"

"Then you own it."

"You know what I feel here? No, I won't say I feel at home — I don't think I've ever felt at home anywhere. And I won't say I feel as I did in the palaces I've visited or in the great European cathedrals. I feel as I did when I was still in Hell's Kitchen — in the best days I had there — there weren't many. But sometimes — when I sat like this — only it was some piece of broken wall by the wharf — and there were a lot of stars above and dump heaps around me and the river smelt of rotting shells ... Howard, when you look back, does it seem to you as if all your days had rolled forward evenly, like a sort of typing exercise, all alike? Or were there stops-points reached — and then the typing rolled on again?"

"There were stops."

"Did you know them at the time — did you know that that's what they were?"

"Yes."

"I didn't. I knew afterward. But I never knew the reasons. There was one moment — I was twelve and I stood behind a wall, waiting to be killed. Only I knew I wouldn't be killed. Not what I did afterward, not the fight I had, but just that one moment when I waited. I don't know why that was a stop to be remembered or why I feel proud of it. I don't know why I have to think of it here."

"Don't look for the reason."

"Do you know it?"

"I said don't look for it."

"I have been thinking about my past — ever since I met you. And I had gone for years without thinking of it. No, no secret conclusions for you to draw from that. It doesn't hurt me to look back this way, and it doesn't give me pleasure. It's just looking. Not a quest, not even a journey. Just a kind of walk at random, like wandering through the countryside in the evening, when one's a little tired ... If there's any connection to you at all, it's only one thought that keeps coming back to me. I keep thinking that you and I started in the same way. From the same point. From nothing. I just think that. Without any comment. I don't seem to find any particular meaning in it at all. Just 'we started in the same way' ... Want to tell me what it means?"

"No."

Wynand glanced about the room — and noticed a newspaper on top of a filing cabinet.

"Who the hell reads the Banner around here?"

"I do."

"Since when?"

"Since about a month ago."

"Sadism?"

"No. Just curiosity."

Wynand rose, picked up the paper and glanced through the pages. He stopped at one and chuckled. He held it up: the page that bore photographed drawings of the buildings for "The March of the Centuries" exposition.

"Awful, isn't it?" said Wynand. "It's disgusting that we have to plug that stuff. But I feel better about it when I think of what you did to those eminent civic leaders." He chuckled happily. "You told them you don't co-operate or collaborate."

"But it wasn't a gesture, Gail. It was plain common sense. One can't collaborate on one's own job. I can co-operate, if that's what they call it, with the workers who erect my buildings. But I can't help them to lay bricks and they can't help me to design the house."

"It was the kind of gesture I'd like to make. I'm forced to give those civic leaders free space in my papers. But it's all right. You've slapped their faces for me." He tossed the paper aside, without anger. "It's like that luncheon I had to attend today. A national convention of advertisers. I must give them publicity — all wiggling, wriggling and drooling. I got so sick of it I thought I'd run amuck and bash somebody's skull. And then I thought of you. I thought that you weren't touched by any of it. Not in any way. The national convention of advertisers doesn't exist as far as you're concerned. It's in some sort of fourth dimension that can never establish any communication with you at all. I thought of that — and I felt a peculiar kind of relief."

He leaned against the filing cabinet, letting his feet slide forward, his arms crossed, and he spoke softly:

"Howard I had a kitten once. The damn thing attached itself to me — a flea-bitten little beast from the gutter, just fur, mud and bones — followed me home, I fed it and kicked it out, but the next day there it was again, and finally I kept it. I was seventeen then, working for the Gazette, just learning to work in the special way I had to learn for life. I could take it all right, but not all of it. There were times when it was pretty bad. Evenings, usually. Once I wanted to kill myself. Not anger — anger made me work harder. Not fear. But disgust, Howard. The kind of disgust that made it seem as if the whole world were under water and the water stood still, water that had backed up out of the sewers and ate into everything, even the sky, even my brain. And then I looked at that kitten. And I thought that it didn't know the things I loathed, it could never know. It was clean — clean in the absolute sense, because it had no capacity to conceive of the world's ugliness. I can't tell you what relief there was in trying to imagine the state of consciousness inside that little brain, trying to share it, a living consciousness, but clean and free. I would lie down on the floor and put my face on that cat's belly, and hear the beast purring. And then I would feel better ... There, Howard. I've called your office a rotting wharf and yourself an alley cat. That's my way of paying homage."

Roark smiled. Wynand saw that the smile was grateful. "Keep still," Wynand said sharply. "Don't say anything." He walked to a window and stood looking out. "I don't know why in hell I should speak like that. These are the first happy years of my life. I met you because I wanted to build a monument to my happiness. I come here to find rest, and I find it, and yet these are the things I talk about ... Well, never mind ... Look, at the filthy weather. Are you through with your work here? Can you call it a day?"

"Yes. Just about."

"Let's go and have dinner together somewhere close by."

"All right."

"May I use your phone? I'll tell Dominique not to expect me for dinner."

He dialed the number. Roark moved to the door of the drafting room — he had orders to give before leaving. But he stopped at the door. He had to stop and hear it.

"Hello, Dominique? ... Yes ... Tired? ... No, you just sounded like it ... I won't be home for dinner, will you excuse me, dearest? ... I don't know, it might be late ... I'm eating downtown ... No. I'm having dinner with Howard Roark ... Hello, Dominique? ... Yes ... What? ... I'm calling from his office ... So long, dear." He replaced the receiver.

In the library of the penthouse Dominique stood with her hand on the telephone, as if some connection still remained.

For five days and nights, she had fought a single desire — to go to him. To see him alone — anywhere — his home or his office or the street — for one word or only one glance — but alone. She could not go. Her share of action was ended. He would come to her when he wished. She knew he would come, and that he wanted her to wait. She had waited, but she had held on to one thought — of an address, an office in the Cord Building.

She stood, her hand closed over the stem of the telephone receiver. She had no right to go to that office. But Gail Wynand had.

When Ellsworth Toohey entered Wynand's office, as summoned, he made a few steps, then stopped. The walls of Wynand's office — the only luxurious room in the Banner Building — were made of cork and copper paneling and had never borne any pictures. Now, on the wall facing Wynand's desk, he saw an enlarged photograph under glass: the picture of Roark at the opening of the Enright House; Roark standing at the parapet of the river, his head thrown back.

Toohey turned to Wynand. They looked at each other.

Wynand indicated a chair and Toohey sat down. Wynand spoke, smiling:

"I never thought I would come to agree with some of your social theories, Mr. Toohey, but I find myself forced to do so. You have always denounced the hypocrisy of the upper caste and preached the virtue of the masses. And now I find that I regret the advantages I enjoyed in my former proletarian state. Were I still in Hell's Kitchen, I would have begun this interview by saying: Listen, louse! — but since I am an inhibited capitalist, I shall not do so."

Toohey waited, he looked curious.

"I shall begin by saying: Listen, Mr. Toohey. I do not know what makes you tick. I do not care to dissect your motives. I do not have the stomach required of medical students. So I shall ask no questions and I wish to hear no explanations. I shall merely tell you that from now on there is a name you will never mention in your column again." He pointed to the photograph. "I could make you reverse yourself publicly and I would enjoy it, but I prefer to forbid the subject to you entirely. Not a word, Mr. Toohey. Not ever again. Now don't mention your contract or any particular clause of it. It would not be advisable. Go on writing your column, but remember its title and devote it to commensurate subjects. Keep it small, Mr. Toohey. Very small."

"Yes, Mr. Wynand," said Toohey easily. "I don't have to write about Mr. Roark at present."

"That's all."

Toohey rose. "Yes, Mr. Wynand."

5.

GAIL WYNAND sat at his desk in his office and read the proofs of an editorial on the moral value of raising large families. Sentences like used chewing gum, chewed and rechewed, spat out and picked up again, passing from mouth to mouth to pavement to shoe sole to mouth to brain ... He thought of Howard Roark and went on reading the Banner; it made things easier.

"Daintiness is a girl's greatest asset. Be sure to launder your undies every night, and learn to talk on some cultured subject, and you will have all the dates you want." "Your horoscope for tomorrow shows a beneficent aspect. Application and sincerity will bring rewards in the fields of engineering, public accounting and romance." "Mrs. Huntington-Cole's hobbies are gardening, the opera and early American sugar-bowls. She divides her time between her little son 'Kit' and her numerous charitable activities." "I'm jus' Millie, I'm jus' a orphan." "For the complete diet send ten cents and a self-addressed, stamped envelope." ... He turned the pages, thinking of Howard Roark.

He signed the advertising contract with Kream-O Pudding — for five years, on the entire Wynand chain, two full pages in every paper every Sunday. The men before his desk sat like triumphal arches in flesh, monuments to victory, to evenings of patience and calculation, restaurant tables, glasses emptied into throats, months of thought, his energy, his living energy flowing like the liquid in the glasses into the opening of heavy lips, into stubby fingers, across a desk, into two full pages every Sunday, into drawings of yellow molds trimmed with strawberries and yellow molds trimmed with butterscotch sauce. He looked, over the heads of the men, at the photograph on the wall of his office: the sky, the river and a man's face, lifted.

But it hurts me, he thought. It hurts me every time I think of him. It makes everything easier — the people, the editorials, the contracts — but easier because it hurts so much. Pain is a stimulant also. I think I hate that name. I will go on repeating it. It is a pain I wish to bear.

Then he sat facing Roark in the study of his penthouse — and he felt no pain; only a desire to laugh without malice.

"Howard, everything you've done in your life is wrong according to the stated ideals of mankind. And here you are. And somehow it seems a huge joke on the whole world."

Roark sat in an armchair by the fireplace. The glow of the fire moved over the study; the light seemed to curve with conscious pleasure about every object in the room, proud to stress its beauty, stamping approval upon the taste of the man who had achieved this setting for himself. They were alone. Dominique had excused herself after dinner. She had known that they wanted to be alone.

"A joke on all of us," said Wynand. "On every man in the street. I always look at the men in the street. I used to ride in the subways just to see how many of them carried the Banner. I used to hate them and, sometimes, to be afraid. But now I look at every one of them and I want to say: 'Why, you poor fool!' That's all."

He telephoned Roark's office one morning. "Can you have lunch with me, Howard? ... Meet me at the Nordland in half an hour."

He shrugged, smiling, when he faced Roark across the restaurant table.

"Nothing at all, Howard. No special reason. Just spent a revolting half-hour and wanted to take the taste of it out of my mouth."

"What revolting half-hour?"

"Had my pictures taken with Lancelot Clokey."

"Who's Lancelot Clokey?"

Wynand laughed aloud, forgetting his controlled elegance, forgetting the startled glance of the waiter.

"That's it, Howard. That's why I had to have lunch with you. Because you can say things like that."

"Now what's the matter?"

"Don't you read books? Don't you know that Lancelot Clokey is 'our most sensitive observer of the international scene'? That's what the critic said — in my own Banner. Lancelot Clokey has just been chosen author of the year or something by some organization or other. We're running his biography in the Sunday supplement, and I had to pose with my arm around his shoulders. He wears silk shirts and smells of gin. His second book is about his childhood and how it helped him to understand the international scene. It sold a hundred thousand copies. But you've never heard of him. Go on, eat your lunch, Howard. I like to see you eating. I wish you were broke, so that I could feed you this lunch and know you really needed it."

At the end of a day, he would come, unannounced, to Roark's office or to his home. Roark had an apartment in the Enright House, one of the crystal-shaped units over the East River: a workroom, a library, a bedroom. He had designed the furniture himself. Wynand could not understand for a long time why the place gave him an impression of luxury, until he saw that one did not notice the furniture at all: only a clean sweep of space and the luxury of an austerity that had not been simple to achieve. In financial value it was the most modest home that Wynand had entered as a guest in twenty-five years.

"We started in the same way, Howard," he said, glancing about Roark's room. "According to my judgment and experience, you should have remained in the gutter. But you haven't. I like this room. I like to sit here."

"I like to see you here."

"Howard, have you ever held power over a single human being?"

"No. And I wouldn't take it if it were offered to me."

"I can't believe that."

"It was offered to me once, Gail. I refused it."

Wynand looked at him with curiosity; it was the first time that he heard effort in Roark's voice.

"Why?"

"I had to."

"Out of respect for the man?"

"It was a woman."

"Oh, you damn fool! Out of respect for a woman?"

"Out of respect for myself."

"Don't expect me to understand. We're as opposite as two men can be."

"I thought that once. I wanted to think that."

"And now you don't?"

"No."

"Don't you despise every act I've ever committed?"

"Just about every one I know of."

"And you still like to see me here?"

"Yes. Gail, there was a man who considered you the symbol of the special evil that destroyed him and would destroy me. He left me his hatred. And there was another reason. I think I hated you, before I saw you."

"I knew you did. What made you change your mind?"

"I can't explain that to you."

They drove together to the estate in Connecticut where the walls of the house were rising out of the frozen ground. Wynand followed Roark through the future rooms, he stood aside and watched Roark giving instructions. Sometimes, Wynand came alone. The workers saw the black roadster twisting up the road to the top of the hill, saw Wynand's figure standing at a distance, looking at the structure. His figure always carried with it all the implications of his position; the quiet elegance of his overcoat, the angle of his hat, the confidence of his posture, tense and casual together, made one think of the Wynand empire; of the presses thundering from ocean to ocean, of the papers, the lustrous magazine covers, the light rays trembling through newsreels, the wires coiling over the world, the power flowing into every palace, every capital, every secret, crucial room, day and night, through every costly minute of this man's life. He stood still against a sky gray as laundry water, and snowflakes fluttered lazily past the brim of his hat.

On a day in April he drove alone to Connecticut after an absence of many weeks. The roadster flew across the countryside, not an object, but a long streak of speed. He felt no jolting motion inside his small cube of glass and leather; it seemed to him that his car stood still, suspended over the ground, while the control of his hands on the wheel made the earth fly past him, and he merely had to wait until the place he desired came rolling to him. He loved the wheel of a car as he loved his desk in the office of the Banner: both gave him the same sense of a dangerous monster let loose under the expert direction of his fingers.

Something tore past across his vision, and he was a mile away before he thought how strange it was that he should have noticed it, because it had been only a clump of weeds by the road; a mile later he realized that it was stranger still: the weeds were green. Not in the middle of winter, he thought, and then he understood, surprised, that it was not winter any longer. He had been very busy in the last few weeks; he had not had time to notice. Now he saw it, hanging over the fields around him, a hint of green, like a whisper. He heard three statements in his mind, in precise succession, like interlocking gears: It's spring — I wonder if I have many left to see — I am fifty-five years old.

They were statements, not emotions; he felt nothing, neither eagerness nor fear. But he knew it was strange that he should experience a sense of time; he had never thought of his age in relation to any measure, he had never defined his position on a limited course, he had not thought of a course nor of limits. He had been Gail Wynand and he had stood still, like this car, and the years had sped past him, like this earth, and the motor within him had controlled the flight of the years.

No, he thought, I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered — and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life. But I loved it.

If it were true, that old legend about appearing before a supreme judge and naming one's record, I would offer, with all my pride, not any act I committed, but one thing I have never done on this earth: that I never sought an outside sanction. I would stand and say: I am Gail Wynand, the man who has committed every crime except the foremost one: that of ascribing futility to the wonderful fact of existence and seeking justification beyond myself. This is my pride: that now, thinking of the end, I do not cry like all the men of my age: but what was the use and the meaning? I was the use and meaning, I, Gail Wynand. That I lived and that I acted.

He drove to the foot of the hill and slammed the brakes on, startled, looking up. In his absence the house had taken shape; it could be recognized now — it looked like the drawing. He felt a moment of childish wonder that it had really come out just as on the sketch, as if he had never quite believed it. Rising against the pale blue sky, it still looked like a drawing, unfinished, the planes of masonry like spreads of watercolor filled in, the naked scaffolding like pencil lines; a huge drawing on a pale blue sheet of paper.

He left the car and walked to the top of the hill. He saw Roark among the men. He stood outside and watched the way Roark walked through the structure, the way he turned his head or raised his hand, pointing. He noticed Roark's manner of stopping: his legs apart, his arms straight at his sides, his head lifted; an instinctive pose of confidence, of energy held under effortless control a moment that gave to his body the structural cleanliness of his own building. Structure, thought Wynand, is a solved problem of tension, of balance, of security in counterthrusts.

He thought: There's no emotional significance in the act of erecting a building; it's just a mechanical job, like laying sewers or making an automobile. And he wondered why he watched Roark, feeling what he felt in his art gallery. He belongs in an unfinished building, thought Wynand, more than in a completed one, more than at a drafting table, it's his right setting; it's becoming to him — as Dominique said a yacht was becoming to me.

Afterward Roark came out and they walked together along the crest of the hill, among the trees. They sat down on a fallen tree trunk, they saw the structure in the distance through the stems of the brushwood. The stems were dry and naked, but there was a quality of spring in the cheerful insolence of their upward thrust, the stirring of a self-assertive purpose.

Wynand asked:

"Howard, have you ever been in love?"

Roark turned to look straight at him and answer quietly:

"I still am."

"But when you walk through a building, what you feel is greater than that?"

"Much greater, Gail."

"I was thinking of people who say that happiness is impossible on earth. Look how hard they all try to find some joy in life. Look how they struggle for it. Why should any living creature exist in pain? By what conceivable right can anyone demand that a human being exist for anything but his own joy? Every one of them wants it. Every part of him wants it. But they never find it. I wonder why. They whine and say they don't understand the meaning of life. There's a particular kind of people that I despise. Those who seek some sort of a higher purpose or 'universal goal,' who don't know what to live for, who moan that they must 'find themselves.' You hear it all around us. That seems to be the official bromide of our century. Every book you open. Every drooling self-confession. It seems to be the noble thing to confess. I'd think it would be the most shameful one."

"Look, Gail." Roark got up, reached out, tore a thick branch off a tree, held it in both hands, one fist closed at each end; then, his wrists and knuckles tensed against the resistance, he bent the branch slowly into an arc. "Now I can make what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing. That's the meaning of life."

"Your strength?"

"Your work." He tossed the branch aside. "The material the earth offers you and what you make of it ... What are you thinking of, Gail?"

"The photograph on the wall of my office."

To remain controlled, as he wished, to be patient, to make of patience an active duty executed consciously each day, to stand before Roark and let her serenity tell him: "This is the hardest you could have demanded of me, but I'm glad, if it's what you want" — such was the discipline of Dominique's existence.

She stood by, as a quiet spectator of Roark and Wynand. She watched them silently. She had wanted to understand Wynand. This was the answer.

She accepted Roark's visits to their house and the knowledge that in the hours of these evenings he was Wynand's property, not hers. She met him as a gracious hostess, indifferent and smiling, not a person but an exquisite fixture of Wynand's home, she presided at the dinner table, she left them in the study afterward.

She sat alone in the drawing room, with the lights turned off and the door open; she sat erect and quiet, her eyes on the slit of light under the door of the study across the hall. She thought: This is my task, even when alone, even in the darkness, within no knowledge but my own, to look at that door as I looked at him here, without complaint ... Roark, if it's the punishment you chose for me, I'll carry it completely, not as a part to play in your presence, but as a duty to perform alone — you know that violence is not hard for me to bear, only patience is, you chose the hardest, and I must perform it and offer it to you ... my ... dearest one ...

When Roark looked at her, there was no denial of memory in his eyes. The glance said simply that nothing had changed and nothing was needed to state it. She felt as if she heard him saying: Why are you shocked? Have we ever been parted? Your drawing room, your husband and the city you dread beyond the windows, are they real now, Dominique? Do you understand? Are you beginning to understand? "Yes," she would say suddenly, aloud, trusting that the word would fit the conversation of the moment, knowing that Roark would hear it as his answer.

It was not a punishment he had chosen for her. It was a discipline imposed on both of them, the last test. She understood his purpose when she found that she could feel her love for him proved by the room, by Wynand, even by his love for Wynand and hers, by the impossible situation, by her enforced silence — the barriers proving to her that no barriers could exist.

She did not see him alone. She waited.

She would not visit the site of construction. She had said to Wynand: "I'll see the house when it's finished." She never questioned him about Roark. She let her hands lie in sight on the arms of her chair, so that the relief of any violent motion would be denied her, her hands as her private barometer of endurance, when Wynand came home late at night and told her that he had spent the evening at Roark's apartment, the apartment she had never seen.

Once she broke enough to ask:

"What is this, Gail? An obsession?"

"I suppose so." He added: "It's strange that you don't like him."

"I haven't said that."

"I can see it. I'm not really surprised. It's your way. You would dislike him — precisely because he's the type of man you should like ... Don't resent my obsession."

"I don't resent it."

"Dominique, would you understand it if I told you that I love you more since I've met him? Even — I want to say this — even when you lie in my arms, it's more than it was. I feel a greater right to you."

He spoke with the simple confidence they had given each other in the last three years. She sat looking at him as she always did; her glance had tenderness without scorn and sadness without pity.

"I understand, Gail."

After a moment she asked:

"What is he to you, Gail? In the nature of a shrine?"

"In the nature of a hair shirt," said Wynand.

When she had gone upstairs, he walked to a window and stood looking up at the sky. His head thrown back, he felt the pull of his throat muscles and he wondered whether the peculiar solemnity of looking at the sky comes, not from what one contemplates, but from that uplift of one's head.

6.

"THE BASIC trouble with the modern world," said Ellsworth Toohey, "is the intellectual fallacy that freedom and compulsion are opposites. To solve the gigantic problems crushing the world today, we must clarify our mental confusion. We must acquire a philosophical perspective. In essence, freedom and compulsion are one. Let me give you a simple illustration. Traffic lights restrain your freedom to cross a street whenever you wish. But this restraint gives you the freedom from being run over by a truck. If you were assigned to a job and prohibited from leaving it, it would restrain the freedom of your career. But it would give you freedom from the fear of unemployment. Whenever a new compulsion is imposed upon us, we automatically gain a new freedom. The two are inseparable. Only by accepting total compulsion can we achieve total freedom."

"That's right!" shrieked Mitchell Layton.

It was an actual shriek, thin and high. It had come with the startling suddenness of a fire siren. His guests looked at Mitchell Layton.

He sat in a tapestry armchair of his drawing room, half lying, legs and stomach forward, like an obnoxious child flaunting his bad posture. Everything about the person of Mitchell Layton was almost and not quite, just short of succeeding: his body had started out to be tall, but changed its mind, leaving him with a long torso above short, stocky legs; his face had delicate bones, but the flesh had played a joke on them, puffing out, not enough to achieve obesity, just enough to suggest permanent mumps. Mitchell Layton pouted. It was not a temporary expression nor a matter of facial arrangement. It was a chronic attribute, pervading his entire person. He pouted with his whole body.

Mitchell Layton had inherited a quarter of a billion dollars and had spent the thirty-three years of his life trying to make amends for it.

Ellsworth Toohey, in dinner clothes, stood lounging against a cabinet. His nonchalance had an air of gracious informality and a touch of impertinence, as if the people around him did not deserve the preservation of rigid good manners.

His eyes moved about the room. The room was not exactly modern, not quite Colonial and just a little short of French Empire; the furnishings presented straight planes and swan-neck supports, black mirrors and electric hurricane lamps, chromium and tapestry; there was unity in a single attribute: in the expensiveness of everything.

"That's right," said Mitchell Layton belligerently, as if he expected everyone to disagree and was insulting them in advance. "People make too damn much fuss about freedom. What I mean is it's a vague, overabused word. I'm not even sure it's such a God-damn blessing. I think people would be much happier in a regulated society that had a definite pattern and a unified form — like a folk dance. You know how beautiful a folk dance is. And rhythmic too. That's because it took generations to work it out and they don't let just any chance fool come along to change it. That's what we need. Pattern, I mean, and rhythm. Also beauty."

"That's an apt comparison, Mitch," said Ellsworth Toohey. "I've always told you that you had a creative mind."

"What I mean is, what makes people unhappy is not too little choice, but too much," said Mitchell Layton. "Having to decide, always to decide, torn every which way all of the time. Now in a society of pattern, a man could feel safe. Nobody would come to him all the time pestering him to do something. Nobody would have to do anything. What I mean is, of course, except working for the common good."

"It's spiritual values that count," said Homer Slottern. "Got to be up to date and keep up with the world. This is a spiritual century."

Homer Slottern had a big face with drowsy eyes. His shirt studs were made of rubies and emeralds combined, like gobs of salad dripping down his starched white shirt front. He owned three department stores.

"There ought to be a law to make everybody study the mystical secrets of the ages," said Mitchell Layton. "It's all been written out in the pyramids in Egypt."

"That's true, Mitch," Homer Slottern agreed. "There's a lot to be said for mysticism. On the one hand. On the other hand, dialectic materialism ... "

"It's not a contradiction," Mitchell Layton drawled contemptuously. "The world of the future will combine both."

"As a matter of fact," said Ellsworth Toohey, "the two are superficially varied manifestations of the same thing. Of the same intention." His eyeglasses gave a spark, as if lighted from within; he seemed to relish his particular statement in his own way.

"All I know is, unselfishness is the only moral principle," said Jessica Pratt, "the noblest principle and a sacred duty and much more important than freedom. Unselfishness is the only way to happiness. I would have everybody who refused to be unselfish shot. To put them out of their misery. They can't be happy anyway.

Jessica Pratt spoke wistfully. She had a gentle, aging face; her powdery skin, innocent of make-up, gave the impression that a finger touching it would be left with a spot of white dust.

Jessica Pratt had an old family name, no money, and a great passion: her love for her younger sister Renée. They had been left orphaned at an early age, and she had dedicated her life to Renee's upbringing. She had sacrificed everything; she had never married; she had struggled, plotted, schemed, defrauded through the years — and achieved the triumph of Renee's marriage to Homer Slottern.

Renee Slottern sat curled up on a footstool, munching peanuts. Once in a while she reached up to the crystal dish on a side table and took another. She exhibited no further exertion. Her pale eyes stared placidly out of her pale face.

"That's going too far, Jess," said Homer Slottern. "You can't expect everybody to be a saint."

"I don't expect anything," said Jessica Pratt meekly. "I've given up expecting long ago. But it's education that we all need. Now I think Mr. Toohey understands. If everybody were compelled to have the proper kind of education, we'd have a better world. If we force people to do good, they will be free to be happy."

"This is a perfectly useless discussion," said Eve Layton. "No intelligent person believes in freedom nowadays. It's dated. The future belongs to social planning. Compulsion is a law of nature. That's that. It's self-evident."

Eve Layton was beautiful. She stood under the light of a chandelier, her smooth black hair clinging to her skull, the pale green satin of her gown alive like water about to stream off and expose the rest of her soft, tanned skin. She had the special faculty of making satin and perfume appear as modern as an aluminum table top. She was Venus rising out of a submarine hatch.

Eve Layton believed that her mission in life was to be the vanguard — it did not matter of what. Her method had always been to take a careless leap and land triumphantly far ahead of all others. Her philosophy consisted of one sentence — "I can get away with anything." In conversation she paraphrased it to her favorite line: "I? I'm the day after tomorrow." She was an expert horsewoman, a racing driver, a stunt pilot, a swimming champion. When she saw that the emphasis of the day had switched to the realm of ideas, she took another leap, as she did over any ditch. She landed well in front, in the latest. Having landed, she was amazed to find that there were people who questioned her feat. Nobody had ever questioned her other achievements. She acquired an impatient anger against all those who disagreed with her political views. It was a personal issue. She had to be right, since she was the day after tomorrow.

Her husband, Mitchell Layton, hated her.

"It's a perfectly valid discussion," he snapped. "Everybody can't be as competent as you, my dear. We must help the others. It's the moral duty of intellectual leaders. What I mean is we ought to lose that bugaboo of being scared of the word compulsion. It's not compulsion when it's for a good cause. What I mean is in the name of love. But I don't know how we can make this country understand it. Americans are so stuffy."

He could not forgive his country because it had given him a quarter of a billion dollars and then refused to grant him an equal amount of reverence. People would not take his views on art, literature, history, biology, sociology and metaphysics as they took his checks. He complained that people identified him with his money too much; he hated them because they did not identify him enough.

"There's a great deal to be said for compulsion," stated Homer Slottern. "Provided it's democratically planned. The common good must always come first, whether we like it or not."

Translated into language, Homer Slottern's attitude consisted of two parts, they were contradictory parts, but this did not trouble him, since they remained untranslated in his mind. First, he felt that abstract theories were nonsense, and if the customers wanted this particular kind, it was perfectly safe to give it to them, and good business, besides. Second, he felt uneasy that he had neglected whatever it was people called spiritual life, in the rush of making money; maybe men like Toohey had something there. And what if his stores were taken away from him? Wouldn't it really be easier to live as manager of a State-owned Department Store? Wouldn't a manager's salary give him all the prestige and comfort he now enjoyed, without the responsibility of ownership?

"Is it true that in the future society any woman will sleep with any man she wants," asked Renee Slottern. It had started as a question, but it petered out. She did not really want to know. She merely felt a vapid wonder about how it felt to have a man one really wanted and how one went about wanting.

"It's stupid to talk about personal choice," said Eve Layton. "It's old-fashioned. There's no such thing as a person. There's only a collective entity. It's self-evident."

Ellsworth Toohey smiled and said nothing.

"Something's got to be done about the masses," Mitchell Layton declared. "They've got to be led. They don't know what's good for them. What I mean is, I can't understand why people of culture and position like us understand the great ideal of collectivism so well and are willing to sacrifice our personal advantages, while the working man who has everything to gain from it remains so stupidly indifferent. I can't understand why the workers in this country have so little sympathy with collectivism."

"Can't you?" said Ellsworth Toohey. His glasses sparkled.

"I'm bored with this," snapped Eve Layton, pacing the room, light streaming off her shoulders.

The conversation switched to art and its acknowledged leaders of the day in every field.

"Lois Cook said that words must be freed from the oppression of reason. She said the stranglehold of reason upon words is like the exploitation of the masses by the capitalists. Words must be permitted to negotiate with reason through collective bargaining. That's what she said. She's so amusing and refreshing."

"Dee — what's his name again? — says that the theater is an instrument of love. It's all wrong, he says, about a play taking place on the stage — it takes place in the hearts of the audience."

"Jules Fougler said in last Sunday's Banner that in the world of the future the theater will not be necessary at all. He says that the daily life of the common man is as much a work of art in itself as the best Shakespearean tragedy. In the future there will be no need for a dramatist. The critic will simply observe the life of the masses and evaluate its artistic points for the public. That's what Jules Fougler said. Now I don't know whether I agree with him, but he's got an interesting fresh angle there."

"Lancelot Clokey says the British Empire is doomed. He says there will be no war, because the workers of the world won't allow it, it's international bankers and munitions markers who start wars and they've been kicked out of the saddle. Lancelot Clokey says that the universe is a mystery and that his mother is his best friend. He says the Premier of Bulgaria eats herring for breakfast."

"Gordon Prescott says that four walls and a ceiling is all there is to architecture. The floor is optional. All the rest is capitalistic ostentation. He says nobody should be allowed to build anything anywhere until every inhabitant of the globe has a roof over his head ... Well, what about the Patagonians? It's our job to teach them to want a roof. Prescott calls it dialectic trans-spatial interdependence."

Ellsworth Toohey said nothing. He stood smiling at the vision of a huge typewriter. Each famous name he heard was a key of its keyboard, each controlling a special field, each hitting, leaving its mark, and the whole making connected sentences on a vast blank sheet. A typewriter, he thought, presupposes the hand that punches its keys.

He snapped to attention when he heard Mitchell Layton's sulking voice say:

"Oh, yes, the Banner, God damn it!"

"I know," said Homer Slottern.

"It's slipping," said Mitchell Layton. "It's definitely slipping A swell investment it turned out to be for me. It's the only time Ellsworth's been wrong."

"Ellsworth is never wrong," said Eve Layton.

"Well, he was, that time. It was he who advised me to buy a piece of that lousy sheet." He saw Toohey's eyes, patient as velvet, and he added hastily: "What I mean is, I'm not complaining, Ellsworth. It's all right. It may even help me to slice something off my damned income tax. But that filthy reactionary rag is sure going downhill."

"Have a little patience, Mitch," said Toohey.

"You don't think I should sell and get out from under?"

"No, Mitch, I don't."

"Okay, if you say so. I can afford it. I can afford anything."

"But I jolly well can't!" Homer Slottern cried with surprising vehemence. "It's coming to where one can't afford to advertise in the Banner. It's not their circulation — that's okay — but there's a feeling around — a funny kind of feeling ... Ellsworth, I've been thinking of dropping my contract."

"Why?"

"Do you know about the 'We Don't Read Wynand' movement?"

"I've heard about it."

"It's run by somebody named Gus Webb. They paste stickers on parked windshields and in public privies. They hiss Wynand newsreels in theaters. I don't think it's a large group, but ... Last week an unappetizing female threw a fit in my store — the one on Fifty Avenue — calling us enemies of labor because we advertised in the Banner. You can ignore that, but it becomes serious when one of our oldest customers, a mild little old lady from Connecticut and a Republican for three generations, calls us to say that perhaps maybe she should cancel her charge account, because somebody told her that Wynand is a dictator."

"Gail Wynand knows nothing about politics except of the most primitive kind," said Toohey. "He still thinks in terms of the Democratic Club of Hell's Kitchen. There was a certain innocence about the political corruption of those days, don't you think so?"

"I don't care. That's not what I'm talking about. I mean, the Banner is becoming a kind of liability. It hurts business. One's got to be so careful nowadays. You get tied up with the wrong people and first thing you know there's a smear campaign going on and you get splashed too. I can't afford that sort of thing."

"It's not entirely an unjustified smear."

"I don't care. I don't give a damn whether it's true or not. Who am I to stick my neck out for Gail Wynand? If there's a public sentiment against him, my job is to get as far away as I can, pronto. And I'm not the only one. There's a bunch of us who're thinking the same. Jim Ferris of Ferris & Symes, Billy Shultz of Vimo Flakes, Bud Harper of Toddler Togs, and ... hell, you know them all, they're all your friends, our bunch, the liberal businessmen. We all want to yank our ads out of the Banner."

"Have a little patience, Homer. I wouldn't hurry. There's a proper time for everything. There's such a thing as a psychological moment."

"Okay, I'll take your word for it. But there's — there's a kind of feeling in the air. It will become dangerous some day."

"It might. I'll tell you when it will."

"I thought Ellsworth worked on the Banner," said Renee Slottern vacantly, puzzled.

The others turned to her with indignation and pity.

"You're naive, Renee," shrugged Eve Layton.

"But what's the matter with the Banner?"

"Now, child, don't you bother with dirty politics," said Jessica Pratt. "The Banner is a wicked paper. Mr. Wynand is a very evil man. He represents the selfish interests of the rich."

"I think he's good-looking," said Renee. "I think he has sex appeal."

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" cried Eve Layton.

"Now, after all, Renee is entitled to express her opinion," Jessica Pratt said with immediate rage.

"Somebody told me Ellsworth is the president of the Union of Wynand Employees," drawled Renee.

"Oh dear me, no, Renee. I'm never president of anything. I'm just a rank-and-file member. Like any copy boy."

"Do they have a Union of Wynand Employees?" asked Homer Slottern.

"It was just a club, at first," said Toohey. "It became a union last year."

"Who organized it?"

"How can one tell? It was more or less spontaneous. Like all mass movements."

"I think Wynand is a bastard," declared Mitchell Layton. "Who does he think he is anyway? I come to a meeting of stockholders and he treats us like flunkies. Isn't my money as good as his? Don't I own a hunk of his damn paper? I could teach him a thing or two about journalism. I have ideas. What's he so damn arrogant about? Just because he made that fortune himself? Does he have to be such a damn snob just because he came from Hell's Kitchen? It isn't other people's fault if they weren't lucky enough to be born in Hell's Kitchen to rise out of! Nobody understands what a terrible handicap it is to be born rich. Because people just take for granted that because you were born that way you'd just be no good if you weren't What I mean is if I'd had Gail Wynand's breaks, I'd be twice as rich as he is by now and three times as famous. But he's so conceited he doesn't realize this at all!"

Nobody said a word. They heard the rising inflection of hysteria in Mitchell Layton's voice. Eve Layton looked at Toohey, silently appealing for help. Toohey smiled and made a step forward.

"I'm ashamed of you, Mitch," he said.

Homer Slottern gasped. One did not rebuke Mitchell Layton on this subject; one did not rebuke Mitchell Layton on any subject.

Mitchell Layton's lower lip vanished.

"I'm ashamed of you, Mitch," Toohey repeated sternly, "for comparing yourself to a man as contemptible as Gail Wynand."

Mitchell Layton's mouth relaxed in the equivalent of something almost as gentle as a smile.

"That's true," he said humbly.

"No, you would never be able to match Gail Wynand's career. Not with your sensitive spirit and humanitarian instincts. That's what's holding you down, Mitch, not your money. Who cares about money? The age of money is past. It's your nature that's too fine for the brute competition of our capitalistic system. But that, too, is passing."

"It's self-evident," said Eve Layton.

It was late when Toohey left. He felt exhilarated and he decided to walk home. The streets of the city lay gravely empty around him, and the dark masses of the buildings rose to the sky, confident and unprotected. He remembered what he had said to Dominique once: "A complicated piece of machinery, such as our society ... and by pressing your little finger against one spot ... the center of all its gravity ... you can make the thing crumble into a worthless heap of scrap iron ... " He missed Dominique. He wished she could have been with him to hear this evening's conversation.

The unshared was boiling up within him. He stopped in the middle of a silent street, threw his head back and laughed aloud, looking at the tops of skyscrapers.

A policeman tapped him on the shoulder, asking: "Well, Mister?"

Toohey saw buttons and blue cloth tight over a broad chest, a stolid face, hard and patient; a man as set and dependable as the buildings around them.

"Doing your duty, officer?" Toohey asked, the echoes of laughter like jerks in his voice. "Protecting law and order and decency and human lives?" The policeman scratched the back of his head. "You ought to arrest me, officer."

"Okay, pal, okay," said the policeman. "Run along. We all take one too many once in a while."

7.

IT WAS only when the last painter had departed that Peter Keating felt a sense of desolation and a numb weakness in the crook of his elbows. He stood in the hall, looking up at the ceiling. Under the harsh gloss of paint he could still see the outline of the square where the stairway had been removed and the opening closed over. Guy Francon's old office was gone. The firm Keating & Dumont had a single floor left now.

He thought of the stairway and how he had walked up its red-plushed steps for the first time, carrying a drawing on the tips of his fingers. He thought of Guy Francon's office with the glittering butterfly reflections. He thought of the four years when that office had been his own.

He had known what was happening to his firm, in these last years; he had known it quite well while men in overalls removed the stairway and closed the gap in the ceiling. But it was that square under the white paint that made it real to him, and final.

He had resigned himself to the process of going down, long ago. He had not chosen to resign himself — that would have been a positive decision — it had merely happened and he had let it happen. It had been simple and almost painless, like drowsiness carrying one down to nothing more sinister than a welcome sleep. The dull pain came from wishing to understand why it had happened.

There was "The March of the Centuries" exposition, but that alone could not have mattered. "The March of the Centuries" had opened in May. It was a flop. What's the use, thought Keating, why not say the right word? Flop. It was a ghastly flop. "The title of this venture would be most appropriate," Ellsworth Toohey had written, "if we assumed that the centuries had passed by on horseback." Everything else written about the architectural merits of the exposition had been of the same order.

Keating thought, with wistful bitterness, of how conscientiously they had worked, he and the seven other architects, designing those buildings. It was true that he had pushed himself forward and hogged the publicity, but he certainly had not done that as far as designing was concerned. They had worked in harmony, through conference after conference, each giving in to the others, in true collective spirit, none trying to impose his personal prejudices or selfish ideas. Even Ralston Holcombe had forgotten Renaissance. They had made the buildings modern, more modem than anything ever seen, more modern than the show windows of Slottern's Department Store. He did not think that the buildings looked like "coils of toothpaste when somebody steps on the tube or stylized versions of the lower intestine," as one critic had said. But the public seemed to think it, if the public thought at all. He couldn't tell. He knew only that tickets to "The March of the Centuries" were being palmed off at Screeno games in theaters, and that the sensation of the exposition, the financial savior, was somebody named Juanita Fay who danced with a live peacock as sole garment.

But what if the Fair did flop? It had not hurt the other architects of its council. Gordon L. Prescott was going stronger than ever. It wasn't that, thought Keating. It had begun before the Fair. He could not say when.

There could be so many explanations. The depression had hit them all; others had recovered to some extent, Keating & Dumont had not. Something had gone out of the firm and out of the circles from which it drew its clients, with the retirement of Guy Francon. Keating realized that there had been art and skill and its own kind of illogical energy in the career of Guy Francon, even if the art consisted only of his social charm and the energy was directed at snaring bewildered millionaires. There had been a twisted sort of sense in people's response to Guy Francon.

He could see no hint of rationality in the things to which people responded now. The leader of the profession — on a mean scale, there was no grand scale left in anything — was Gordon L. Prescott, Chairman of the Council of American Builders; Gordon L. Prescott who lectured on the transcendental pragmatism of architecture and social planning, who put his feet on tables in drawing rooms, attended formal dinners in knickerbockers and criticized the soup aloud. Society people said they liked an architect who was a liberal. The A.G.A. still existed, in stiff, hurt dignity, but people referred to it as the Old Folks' Home. The Council of American Builders ruled the profession and talked about a closed shop, though no one had yet devised a way of achieving that. Whenever an architect's name appeared in Ellsworth Toohey's column, it was always that of Augustus Webb. At thirty-nine, Keating heard himself described as old-fashioned.

He had given up trying to understand. He knew dimly that the explanation of the change swallowing the world was of a nature he preferred not to know. In his youth he had felt an amicable contempt for the works of Guy Francon or Ralston Holcombe, and emulating them had seemed no more than innocent quackery. But he knew that Gordon L. Prescott and Gus Webb represented so impertinent, so vicious a fraud that to suspend the evidence of his eyes was beyond his elastic capacity. He had believed that people found greatness in Holcombe and there had been a reasonable satisfaction in borrowing his borrowed greatness. He knew that no one saw anything whatever in Prescott. He felt something dark and leering in the manner with which people spoke of Prescott's genius; as if they were not doing homage to Prescott, but spitting upon genius. For once, Keating could not follow people; it was too clear, even to him, that public favor had ceased being a recognition of merit, that it had become almost a brand of shame.

He went on, driven by inertia. He could not afford his large floor of offices and he did not use half the rooms, but he kept them and paid the deficit out of his own pocket. He had to go on. He had lost a large part of his personal fortune in careless stock speculation; but he had enough left to insure some comfort for the rest of his life. This did not disturb him; money had ceased to hold his attention as a major concern. It was inactivity he dreaded; it was the question mark looming beyond, if the routine of his work were to be taken away from him.

He walked slowly, his arms pressed to his body, his shoulders hunched, as if drawn against a permanent chill. He was gaining weight. His face was swollen; he kept it down, and the pleat of a second chin was flattened against the knot of his necktie. A hint of his beauty remained and made him look worse; as if the lines of his face had been drawn on a blotter and had spread, blurring. The gray threads on his temples were becoming noticeable. He drank often, without joy.

He had asked his mother to come back to live with him. She had come back. They sat through long evenings together in the living room, saying nothing; not in resentment, but seeking reassurance from each other. Mrs. Keating offered no suggestions, no reproaches. There was, instead, a new, panic-shaped tenderness in her manner toward her son. She would cook his breakfast, even though they had a maid; she would prepare his favorite dish — French pancakes, the kind he had liked so much when he was nine years old and sick with the measles. If he noticed her efforts and made some comment of pleasure, she nodded, blinking, turning away, asking herself why it should make her so happy and if it did, why should her eyes fill with tears.

She would ask suddenly, after a silence: "it will be all right, Petey? Won't it?" And he would not ask what she meant, but answer quietly: "Yes, Mother, it will be all right," putting the last of his capacity for pity into an effort to make his voice sound convincing.

Once, she asked him: "You're happy, Petey? Aren't you?" He looked at her and saw that she was not laughing at him; her eyes were wide and frightened. And as he could not answer, she cried: "But you've got to be happy! Petey, you've got to! Else what have I lived for?" He wanted to get up, gather her in his arms and tell her that it was all right — and then he remembered Guy Francon saying to him on his wedding day: "I want you to feel proud of me, Peter ... I want to feel that it had some meaning." Then he could not move. He felt himself in the presence of something he must not grasp, must never allow into his mind. He turned away from his mother.

One evening, she said without preamble. "Petey, I think you should get married. I think it would be much better if you were married." He found no answer, and while he groped for something gay to utter, she added: "Petey, why don't you ... why don't you marry Catherine Halsey?" He felt anger filling his eyes, he felt pressure on his swollen lids, while he was turning slowly to his mother; then he saw her squat little figure before him, stiff and defenseless, with a kind of desperate pride, offering to take any blow he wished to deliver, absolving him in advance — and he knew that it had been the bravest gesture she had ever attempted. The anger went, because he felt her pain more sharply than the shock of his own, and he lifted one hand, to let it fall limply, to let the gesture cover everything, saying only: "Mother, don't let's ,.."

On weekends, not often, but once or twice a month, he vanished out of town. No one knew where he went. Mrs. Keating worried about it, but asked no questions. She suspected that there was a woman somewhere, and not a nice one, or he would not be so glumly silent on the subject Mrs. Keating found herself hoping that he had fallen into the clutches of the worst, greediest slut who would have sense enough to make him marry her.

He went to a shack he had rented in the hills of an obscure village. He kept paints, brushes and canvas in the shack. He spent his days in the hills, painting. He could not tell why he had remembered that unborn ambition of his youth, which his mother had drained and switched into the channel of architecture. He could not tell by what process the impulse had become irresistible; but he had found the shack and tie liked going there.

He could not say that he liked to paint. It was neither pleasure nor relief, it was self-torture, but somehow, that didn't matter. He sat on a canvas stool before a small easel and he looked at an empty sweep of hills, at the woods and the sky. He had a quiet pain as sole conception of what he wanted to express, a humble, unbearable tenderness for the sight of the earth around him — and something tight, paralyzed, as sole means to express it. He went on. He tried. He looked at his canvases and knew that nothing was captured in their childish crudeness. It did not matter. No one was to see them. He stacked them carefully in a corner of the shack, and he locked the door before he returned to town. There was no pleasure in it, no pride, no solution; only — while he sat alone before the easel — a sense of peace.

He tried not to think of Ellsworth Toohey. A dim instinct told him that he could preserve a precarious security of spirit so long as he did not touch upon that subject. There could be but one explanation of Toohey's behavior toward him — and he preferred not to formulate it.

Toohey had drifted away from him. The intervals between their meetings had grown longer each year. He accepted it and told himself that Toohey was busy. Toohey's public silence about him was baffling. He told himself that Toohey had more important things to write about. Toohey's criticism of "The March of the Centuries" had been a blow. He told himself that his work had deserved it. He accepted any blame. He could afford to doubt himself. He could not afford to doubt Ellsworth Toohey.

It was Neil Dumont who forced him to think of Toohey again. Neil spoke petulantly about the state of the world, about crying over spilt milk, change as a law of existence, adaptability, and the importance of getting in on the ground floor. Keating gathered, from a long, confused speech, that business, as they had known it, was finished, that government would take over whether they liked it or not, that the building trade was dying and the government would soon be the sole builder and they might as well get in now, if they wanted to get in at all. "Look at Gordon Prescott," said Neil Dumont, "and what a sweet little monopoly he's got himself in housing projects and post offices. Look at Gus Webb muscling in on the racket."

Keating did not answer. Neil Dumont was throwing his own unconfessed thoughts at him; he had known that he would have to face this soon and he had tried to postpone the moment.

He did not want to think of Cortlandt Homes.

Cortlandt Homes was a government housing project to be built in Astoria, on the shore of the East River. It was planned as a gigantic experiment in low-rent housing, to serve as model for the whole country; for the whole world. Keating had heard architects talking about it for over a year. The appropriation had been approved and the site chosen; but not the architect. Keating would not admit to himself how desperately he wanted to get Cortlandt and how little chance he had of getting it.

"Listen, Pete, we might as well call a spade a spade," said Neil Dumont. "We're on the skids, pal, and you know it. All right, we'll last another year or two, coasting on your reputation. And then? It's not our fault. It's just that private enterprise is dead and getting deader. It's a historical process. The wave of the future. So we might as well get our surfboard while we can. There's a good, sturdy one waiting for the boy who's smart enough to grab it. Cortlandt Homes."

Now he had heard it pronounced. Keating wondered why the name had sounded like the muffled stroke of a bell; as if the sound had opened and closed a sequence which he would not be able to stop.

"What do you mean, Neil?"

"Cortlandt Homes. Ellsworth Toohey. Now you know what I mean."

"Neil, I ... "

"What's the matter with you, Pete? Listen, everybody's laughing about it. Everybody's saying that if they were Toohey's special pet, like you are, they'd get Cortlandt Homes like that" — he snapped his manicured fingers — "just like that, and nobody can understand what you're waiting for. You know it's friend Ellsworth who's running this particular housing show."

"It's not true. He is not. He has no official position. He never has any official position."

"Whom are you kidding? Most of the boys that count in every office are his boys. Damned if I know how he got them in, but he did. What's the matter, Pete? Are you afraid of asking Ellsworth Toohey for a favor?"

This was it, thought Keating; now there was no retreat. He could not admit to himself that he was afraid of asking Ellsworth Toohey.

"No," he said, his voice dull, "I'm not afraid, Neil. I'll ... All right, Neil. I'll speak to Ellsworth."

Ellsworth Toohey sat spread out on a couch, wearing a dressing gown. His body had the shape of a sloppy letter X-arms stretched over his head, along the edge of the back pillows, legs open in a wide fork. The dressing gown was made of silk, bearing the trademarked pattern of Coty's face powder, white puffs on an orange background; it looked daring and gay, supremely elegant through sheer silliness. Under the gown, Toohey wore sleeping pyjamas of pistachio-green linen, crumpled. The trousers floated about the thin sticks of his ankles.

This was just like Toohey, thought Keating; this pose amidst the severe fastidiousness of his living room; a single canvas by a famous artist on the wall behind him — and the rest of the room unobtrusive like a monk's cell; no, thought Keating, like the retreat of a king in exile, scornful of material display.

Toohey's eyes were warm, amused, encouraging. Toohey had answered the telephone in person; Toohey had granted him the appointment at once. Keating thought: It's good to be received like this, informally. What was I afraid of? What did I doubt? We're old friends.

"Oh dear me," said Toohey, yawning, "one gets so tired! There comes a moment into every man's day when he gets the urge to relax like a stumble bum. I got home and just felt I couldn't keep my clothes on another minute. Felt like a damn peasant — just plain itchy — and had to get out. You don't mind, do you, Peter? With some people it's necessary to be stiff and formal, but with you it's not necessary at all."

"No, of course not."

"Think I'll take a bath after a while. There's nothing like a good hot bath to make one feel like a parasite. Do you like hot baths, Peter?"

"Why ... yes ... I guess so ... "

"You're gaining weight, Peter. Pretty soon you'll look revolting in a bathtub. You're gaining weight and you look peaked. That's a bad combination. Absolutely wrong aesthetically. Fat people should be happy and jolly."

"I ... I'm all right, Ellsworth. It's only that ... "

"You used to have a nice disposition. You mustn't lose that. People will get bored with you."

"I haven't changed, Ellsworth." Suddenly he stressed the words. "I haven't really changed at all. I'm just what I was when I designed the Cosmo-Slotnick Building."

He looked at Toohey hopefully. He thought this was a hint crude enough for Toohey to understand; Toohey understood things much more delicate than that. He waited to be helped out. Toohey went on looking at him, his eyes sweet and blank.

"Why, Peter, that's an unphilosophical statement. Change is the basic principle of the universe. Everything changes. Seasons, leaves, flowers, birds, morals, men and buildings. The dialectic process, Peter."

"Yes, of course. Things change, so fast, in such a funny way. You don't even notice how, and suddenly one morning there it is. Remember, just a few years ago, Lois Cook and Gordon Prescott and Ike and Lance — they were nobody at all. And now — why, Ellsworth, they're on top and they're all yours. Anywhere I look, any big name I hear — it's one of your boys. You're amazing, Ellsworth. How anybody can do that — in just a few years — "

"It's much simpler than it appears to you, Peter. That's because you think in terms of personalities. You think it's done piecemeal. But dear me, the lifetimes of a hundred press agents wouldn't be enough. It can be done much faster. This is the age of time-saving devices. If you want something to grow, you don't nurture each seed separately. You just spread a certain fertilizer. Nature will do the rest. I believe you think I'm the only one responsible. But I'm not. Goodness, no. I'm just one figure out of many, one lever in a very vast movement. Very vast and very ancient. It just so happened that I chose the field that interests you — the field of art — because I thought that it focused the decisive factors in the task we had to accomplish."

"Yes, of course, but I mean, I think you were so clever. I mean, that you could pick young people who had talent, who had a future. Damned if I know how you guessed in advance. Remember the awful loft we had for the Council of American Builders? And nobody took us seriously. And people used to laugh at you for wasting time on all kinds of silly organizations."

"My dear Peter, people go by so many erroneous assumptions. For instance, that old one — divide and conquer. Well, it has its applications. But it remained for our century to discover a much more potent formula. Unite and rule."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing that you could possibly grasp. And I must not overtax your strength. You don't look as if you had much to spare."

"Oh, I'm all right. I might look a little worried, because ... "

"Worry is a waste of emotional reserves. Very foolish. Unworthy of an enlightened person. Since we are merely the creatures of our chemical metabolism and of the economic factors of our background, there's not a damn thing we can do about anything whatever. So why worry? There are, of course, apparent exceptions. Merely apparent. When circumstances delude us into thinking that free action is indicated. Such, for instance, as your coming here to talk about Cortlandt Homes."

Keating blinked, then smiled gratefully. He thought it was just like Toohey to guess and spare him the embarrassing preliminaries.

"That's right, Ellsworth. That's just what I wanted to talk to you about. You're wonderful. You know me like a book."

"What kind of a book, Peter? A dime novel? A love story? A crime thriller? Or just a plagiarized manuscript? No, let's say: like a serial. A good, long, exciting serial — with the last installment missing. The last installment got mislaid somewhere. There won't be any last installment. Unless, of course, it's Cortlandt Homes. Yes, that would be a fitting closing chapter." Keating waited, eyes intent and naked, forgetting to think of shame, of pleading that should be concealed. "A tremendous project, Cortlandt Homes. Bigger than Stoneridge. Do you remember Stoneridge, Peter?"

He's just relaxed with me, thought Keating, he's tired, he can't be tactful all the time, he doesn't realize what he ...

"Stoneridge. The great residential development by Gail Wynand. Have you ever thought of Gail Wynand's career, Peter? From wharf rat to Stoneridge — do you know what a step like that means? Would you care to compute the effort, the energy, the suffering with which Gail Wynand has paid for every step of his way? And here I am, and I hold a project much bigger than Stoneridge in the palm of my hand, without any effort at all." He dropped his hand and added: "If I do hold it. Might be only a figure of speech. Don't take me literally, Peter."

"I hate Wynand," said Keating, looking down at the floor, his voice thick. "I hate him more than any man living."

"Wynand? He's a very naive person. He's naive enough to think that men are motivated primarily by money."

"You aren't, Ellsworth. You're a man of integrity. That's why I believe in you. It's all I've got. If I stopped believing in you, there would be nothing ... anywhere."

"Thank you. Peter. That's sweet of you. Hysterical, but sweet."

"Ellsworth ... you know how I feel about you."

"I have a fair idea."

"You see, that's why I can't understand."

"What?"

He had to say it. He had decided, above all, never to say it, but he had to.

"Ellsworth, why have you dropped me? Why don't you ever write anything about me any more? Why is it always — in your column and everywhere — and on any commission you have a chance to swing — why is it always Gus Webb?"

"But, Peter, why shouldn't it be?"

"But ... I ... "

"I'm sorry to see that you haven't understood me at all. In all these years, you've learned nothing of my principles. I don't believe in individualism, Peter. I don't believe that any one man is any one thing which everybody else can't be. I believe we're all equal and interchangeable. A position you hold today can be held by anybody and everybody tomorrow. Egalitarian rotation. Haven't I always preached that to you? Why do you suppose I chose you? Why did I put you where you were? To protect the field from men who would become irreplaceable. To leave a chance for the Gus Webbs of this world. Why do you suppose I fought against — for instance — Howard Roark?"

Keating's mind was a bruise. He thought it would be a bruise, because it felt as if something flat and heavy had smashed against it, and it would be black and blue and swollen later; now he felt nothing except a sweetish numbness. Such chips of thought as he could distinguish told him that the ideas he heard were of a high moral order, the ones he had always accepted, and therefore no evil could come to him from that, no evil could be intended. Toohey's eyes looked straight at him, dark, gentle, benevolent. Maybe later ... he would know later ... But one thing had pierced through and remained caught on some fragment of his brain. He had understood that. The name.

And while his sole hope of grace rested in Toohey, something inexplicable twisted within him, he leaned forward, knowing that this would hurt, wishing it to hurt Toohey, and his lips curled incredibly into a smile, baring his teeth and gums:

"You failed there, didn't you, Ellsworth? Look where he is now — Howard Roark."

"Oh dear me, how dull it is to discuss things with minds devoted to the obvious. You are utterly incapable of grasping principles, Peter. You think only in terms of persons. Do you really suppose that I have no mission in life save to worry over the specific fate of your Howard Roark? Mr. Roark is merely one detail out of many. I have dealt with him when it was convenient. I am still dealing with him — though not directly. I do grant you, however, that Mr. Howard Roark is a great temptation to me. At times I feel it would be a shame if I never came up against him personally again. But it might not be necessary at all. When you deal in principles, Peter, it saves you the trouble of individual encounters."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you can follow one of two procedures. You can devote your life to pulling out each single weed as it comes up — and then ten lifetimes won't be enough for the job. Or you can prepare your soil in such a manner — by spreading a certain chemical, let us say — that it will be impossible for weeds to grow. This last is faster. I say 'weed' because it is the conventional symbolism and will not frighten you. The same technique, of course, holds true in the case of any other living plant you may wish to eliminate: buckwheat, potatoes, oranges, orchids or morning glories."

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

"But of course you don't. That's my advantage I say these things publicly every single day — and nobody knows what I'm talking about."

"Have you heard that Howard Roark is doing a house, his own home, for Gail Wynand?"

"My dear Peter, did you think I had to wait to learn it from you?"

"Well, how do you like that?"

"Why should it concern me one way or another?"

"Have you heard that Roark and Wynand are the best of friends? And what friendship, from what I hear! Well? You know what Wynand can do. You know what he can make of Roark. Try and stop Roark now! Try and stop him! Try ... "

He choked on a gulp and kept still. He found himself staring at Toohey's bare ankle between the pyjama trouser and the rich fur of a sheepskin-lined slipper. He had never visualized Toohey's nudity; somehow, he had never thought of Toohey as possessing a physical body. There was something faintly indecent about that ankle: Just skin, too bluish-white, stretched over bones that looked too brittle. It made him think of chicken bones left on a plate after dinner, dried out; if one touches them, it takes no effort at all, they just snap. He found himself wishing to reach out, to take that ankle between thumb and forefinger, and just twist the pads of his fingertips.

"Ellsworth, I came here to talk about Cortlandt Homes!" He could not take his eyes off the ankle. He hoped the words would release him.

"Don't shout like that. What's the matter? ... Cortlandt Homes? Well, what did you want to say about it?"

He had to lift his eyes now, in astonishment. Toohey waited innocently.

"I want to design Cortlandt Homes," he said, his voice coming like a paste strained through a cloth. "I want you to give it to me."

"Why should I give it to you?"

There was no answer. If he were to say now: Because you've written that I'm the greatest architect living, the reminder would prove that Toohey believed it no longer. He dared not face such proof, nor Toohey's possible reply. He was staring at two long black hairs on the bluish knob of Toohey's ankle; he could see them quite clearly; one straight, the other twisted into a curlicue. After a long time, he answered:

"Because I need it very badly, Ellsworth."

"I know you do."

There was nothing further to say. Toohey shifted his ankle, raised his foot and put it flat upon the arm of the couch, spreading his legs comfortably.

"Sit up, Peter. You look like a gargoyle."

Keating did not move.

"What made you assume that the selection of an architect for Cortlandt Homes was up to me?"

Keating raised his head; it was a stab of relief. He had presumed too much and offended Toohey; that was the reason; that was the only reason.

"Why, I understand ... it's being said ... I was told that you have a great deal of influence on this particular project ... with those people ... and in Washington ... and places ... "

"Strictly in an unofficial capacity. As something of an expert in architectural matters. Nothing else."

"Yes, of course ... That's ... what I meant."

"I can recommend an architect. That's all. I can guarantee nothing. My word is not final."

"That's all I wanted, Ellsworth. A word of recommendation from you ... "

"But, Peter, if I recommend someone, I must give a reason. I can't use such influence as I might have, just to push a friend, can I?"

Keating stared at the dressing gown, thinking: powder puffs, why powder puffs? That's what's wrong with me, if he'd only take the thing off.

"Your professional standing is not what it used to be, Peter."

"You said to 'push a friend,' Ellsworth ... " It was a whisper.

"Well, of course I'm your friend. I've always been your friend. You're not doubting that, are you?"

"No ... I can't, Ellsworth ... "

"Well, cheer up, then. Look, I'll tell you the truth. We're stuck on that damn Cortlandt. There's a nasty little sticker involved. I've tried to get it for Gordon Prescott and Gus Webb — I thought it was more in their line, I didn't think you'd be so interested. But neither of them could make the grade. Do you know the big problem in housing? Economy, Peter. How to design a decent modern unit that could rent for fifteen dollars a month. Ever tried to figure out that one? Well, that's what's expected of the architect who'll do Cortlandt — if they ever find him. Of course, tenant selection helps, they stagger the rents, the families who make twelve hundred a year pay more for the same apartment to help carry the families who make six hundred a year — you know, underdog milked to help somebody underdoggier — but still, the cost of the building and the upkeep must be as low as humanly possible. The boys in Washington don't want another one of those — you heard about it, a little government development where the homes cost ten thousand dollars apiece, while a private builder could have put them up for two thousand. Cortlandt is to be a model project. An example for the whole world. It must be the most brilliant, the most efficient exhibit of planning ingenuity and structural economy ever achieved anywhere. That's what the big boys demand. Gordon and Gus couldn't do it. They tried and were turned down. You'd be surprised to know how many people have tried. Peter, I couldn't sell you to them even at the height of your career. What can I tell them about you? All you stand for is plush, gilt and marble, old Guy Francon, the Cosmo-Slotnick Building, the Frink National Bank, and that little abortion of the Centuries that will never pay for itself. What they want is a millionaire's kitchen for a sharecropper's income. Think you can do it?"

"I ... I have ideas, Ellsworth. I've watched the field ... I've ... studied new methods ... I could ... "

"If you can, it's yours. If you can't, all my friendship won't help you. And God knows I'd like to help you. You look like an old hen in the rain. Here's what I'll do for you, Peter: come to my office tomorrow, I'll give you all the dope, take it home and see if you wish to break your head over it. Take a chance, if you care to. Work me out a preliminary scheme. I can't promise anything. But if you come anywhere near it, I'll submit it to the right people and I'll push it for all I'm worth. That's all I can do for you. It's not up to me. It's really up to you."

Keating sat looking at him. Keating's eyes were anxious, eager and hopeless.

"Care to try, Peter?"

"Will you let me try?"

"Of course I'll let you. Why shouldn't I? I'd be delighted if you, of all people, turned out to be the one to turn the trick."

"About the way I look, Ellsworth," he said suddenly, "about the way I look ... it's not because I mind so much that I'm a failure ... it's because I can't understand why I slipped like that ... from the top ... without any reason at all ... "

"Well, Peter, that could be terrifying to contemplate. The inexplicable is always terrifying. But it wouldn't be so frightening if you stopped to ask yourself whether there's ever been any reason why you should have been at the top ... Oh, come, Peter, smile, I'm only kidding. One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor."

On the following morning Keating came to his office after a visit to Ellsworth Toohey's cubbyhole in the Banner Building. He brought with him a briefcase containing the data on the Cortlandt Homes project. He spread the papers on a large table in his office and locked the door. He asked a draftsman to bring him a sandwich at noon, and he ordered another sandwich at dinner time. "Want me to help, Pete?" asked Neil Dumont. "We could consult and discuss it and ... " Keating shook his head.

He sat at his table all night. After a while he stopped looking at the papers; he sat still, thinking. He was not thinking of the charts and figures spread before him. He had studied them. He had understood what he could not do.

When he noticed that it was daylight, when he heard steps behind his locked door, the movement of men returning to work, and knew that office hours had begun, here and everywhere else in the city — he rose, walked to his desk and reached for the telephone book. He dialed the number.

"This is Peter Keating speaking. I should like to make an appointment to see Mr. Roark."

Dear God, he thought while waiting, don't let him see me. Make him refuse. Dear God, make him refuse and I will have the right to hate him to the end of my days. Don't let him see me.

"Will four o'clock tomorrow afternoon be convenient for you, Mr. Keating?" said the calm, gentle voice of the secretary. "Mr. Roark will see you then."

8.

ROARK knew that he must not show the shock of his first glance at Peter Keating — and that it was too late: he saw a faint smile on Keating's lips, terrible in its resigned acknowledgment of disintegration.

"Are you only two years younger than I am, Howard?" was the first thing Keating asked, looking at the face of the man he had not seen for six years.

"I don't know, Peter, I think so. I'm thirty-seven."

"I'm thirty-nine — that's all."

He moved to the chair in front of Roark's desk, groping for it with his hand. He was blinded by the band of glass that made three walls of Roark's office. He stared at the sky and the city. He had no feeling of height here, and the buildings seemed to lie under his toes, not a real city, but miniatures of famous landmarks, incongruously close and small; he felt he could bend and pick any one of them up in his hand. He saw the black dashes which were automobiles and they seemed to crawl, it took them so long to cover a block the size of his finger. He saw the stone and plaster of the city as a substance that had soaked up light and was throwing it back, row upon row of flat, vertical planes grilled with dots of windows, each plane a reflector, rose-colored, gold and purple — and jagged streaks of smoke-blue running among them, giving them shape, angles and distance. Light streamed from the buildings into the sky and made of the clear summer blue a humble second thought, a spread of pale water over living fire. My God, thought Keating, who are the men that made all this? — and then remembered that he had been one of them.

He saw Roark's figure for an instant, straight and gaunt against the angle of two glass panes behind the desk, then Roark sat down facing him.

Keating thought of men lost in the desert and of men perishing at sea, when, in the presence of the silent eternity of the sky, they have to speak the truth. And now he had to speak the truth, because he was in the presence of the earth's greatest city.

"Howard, is this the terrible thing they meant by turning the other cheek — your letting me come here?'

He did not think of his voice. He did not know that it had dignity.

Roark looked at him silently for a moment; this was a greater change than the swollen face.

"I don't know, Peter. No, if they meant actual forgiveness. Had I been hurt, I'd never forgive it. Yes, if they meant what I'm doing. I don't think a man can hurt another, not in any important way. Neither hurt him nor help him. I have really nothing to forgive you."

"It would be better if you felt you had. It would be less cruel."

"I suppose so."

"You haven't changed, Howard."

"I guess not."

"If this is the punishment I must take — I want you to know that I'm taking it and that I understand. At one time I would have thought I was getting off easy."

"You have changed, Peter."

"I know I have."

"I'm sorry if it has to be punishment."

"I know you are. I believe you. But it's all right. It's only the last of it. I really took it night before last."

"When you decided to come here?"

"Yes."

"Then don't be afraid now. What is it?"

Keating sat straight, calm, not as he had sat facing a man in a dressing gown three days ago, but almost in confident repose. He spoke slowly and without pity:

"Howard, I'm a parasite. I've been a parasite all my life. You designed my best projects at Stanton. You designed the first house I ever built. You designed the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. I have fed on you and on all the men like you who lived before we were born. The men who designed the Parthenon, the Gothic cathedrals, the first skyscrapers. If they hadn't existed, I wouldn't have known how to put stone on stone. In the whole of my life, I haven't added a new doorknob to what men have done before me. I have taken that which was not mine and given nothing in return. I had nothing to give. This is not an act, Howard, and I'm very conscious of what I'm saying. And I came here to ask you to save me again. If you wish to throw me out, do it now."

Roark shook his head slowly, and moved one hand in silent permission to continue.

"I suppose you know that I'm finished as an architect. Oh, not actually finished, but near enough. Others could go on like this for quite a few years, but I can't, because of what I've been. Or was thought to have been. People don't forgive a man who's slipping. I must live up to what they thought. I can do it only in the same way I've done everything else in my life. I need a prestige I don't deserve for an achievement I didn't accomplish to save a name I haven't earned the right to bear. I've been given a last chance. I know it's my last chance. I know I can't do it. I won't try to bring you a mess and ask you to correct it. I'm asking you to design it and let me put my name on it."

"What's the job?"

"Cortlandt Homes."

"The housing project?"

"Yes. You've heard about it?"

"I know everything about it."

"You're interested in housing projects, Howard?"

"Who offered it to you? On what conditions?"

Keating explained, precisely, dispassionately, relating his conversation with Toohey as if it were the summary of a court transcript he had read long ago. He pulled the papers out of his briefcase, put them down on the desk and went on speaking, while Roark looked at them. Roark interrupted him once. "Wait a moment, Peter. Keep still." He waited for a long time. He saw Roark's hand moving the papers idly, but he knew that Roark was not looking at the papers. Roark said: "Go on," and Keating continued obediently, allowing himself no questions.

"I suppose there's no reason why you should do it for me," he concluded. "If you can solve their problem, you can go to them and do it on your own."

Roark smiled. "Do you think I could get past Toohey?"

"No. No, I don't think you could."

"Who told you I was interested in housing projects?"

"What architect isn't?"

"Well, I am. But not in the way you think."

He got up. It was a swift movement, impatient and tense. Keating allowed himself his first opinion: he thought it was strange to see suppressed excitement in Roark.

"Let me think this over. Peter. Leave that here. Come to my house tomorrow night. I'll tell you then."

"You're not ... turning me down?"

"Not yet."

"You might ... after everything that's happened ... ?"

"To hell with that."

"You're going to consider ... "

"I can't say anything now, Peter. I must think it over. Don't count on it. I might want to demand something impossible of you."

"Anything you ask, Howard. Anything."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow."

"Howard, I ... how can I try to thank you, even for ... "

"Don't thank me. If I do it, I'll have my own purpose. I'll expect to gain as much as you will. Probably more. Just remember that I don't do things on any other terms."

Keating came to Roark's house on the following evening. He could not say whether he had waited impatiently or not. The bruise had spread. He could act; he could weigh nothing.

He stood in the middle of Roark's room and looked about slowly. He had been grateful for all the things Roark had not said to him. But he gave voice to the things himself when he asked:

"This is the Enright House, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"You built it?"

Roark nodded, and said: "Sit down, Peter," understanding too well.

Keating had brought his briefcase; he put it down on the floor, propping it against his chair. The briefcase bulged and looked heavy; he handled it cautiously. Then he spread his hands out and forgot the gesture, holding it, asking:

"Well?"

"Peter, can you think for a moment that you're alone in the world?"

"I've been thinking that for three days."

"No. That's not what I mean. Can you forget what you've been taught to repeat, and think, think hard, with your own brain? There are things I'll want you to understand. It's my first condition. I'm going to tell you what I want. If you think of it as most people do, you'll say it's nothing. But if you say that, I won't be able to do it. Not unless you understand completely, with your whole mind, how important it is."

"I'll try, Howard. I was ... honest with you yesterday."

"Yes. If you hadn't been, I would have turned you down yesterday. Now I think you might be able to understand and do your part of it."

"You want to do it?"

"I might. If you offer me enough."

"Howard — anything you ask. Anything. I'd sell my soul ... "

"That's the sort of thing I want you to understand. To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul — would you understand why that's much harder?"

"Yes ... Yes, I think so."

"Well? Go on. I want you to give me a reason why I should wish to design Cortlandt. I want you to make me an offer."

"You can have all the money they pay me. I don't need it. You can have twice the money. I'll double their fee."

"You know better than that, Peter. Is that what you wish to tempt me with?"

"You would save my life."

"Can you think of any reason why I should want to save your life?"

"No."

"Well?"

"It's a great public project, Howard. A humanitarian undertaking. Think of the poor people who live in slums. If you can give them decent comfort within their means, you'll have the satisfaction of performing a noble deed."

"Peter, you were more honest than that yesterday."

His eyes dropped, his voice low, Keating said:

"You will love designing it."

"Yes, Peter. Now you're speaking my language."

"What do you want?"

"Now listen to me. I've been working on the problem of low-rent housing for years. I never thought of the poor people in slums. I thought of the potentialities of our modern world. The new materials, the means, the chances to take and use. There are so many products of man's genius around us today. There are such great possibilities to exploit. To build cheaply, simply, intelligently. I've had a lot of time to study. I didn't have much to do after the Stoddard Temple. I didn't expect results. I worked because I can't look at any material without thinking: What could be done with it? And the moment I think that, I've got to do it. To find the answer, to break the thing. I've worked on it for years. I loved it. I worked because it was a problem I wanted to solve. You wish to know how to build a unit to rent for fifteen dollars a month? I'll show you how to build it for ten." Keating made an involuntary movement forward. "But first, I want you to think and tell me what made me give years to this work. Money? Fame? Charity? Altruism?" Keating shook his head slowly. "All right. You're beginning to understand. So whatever we do, don't let's talk about the poor people in the slums. They have nothing to do with it, though I wouldn't envy anyone the job of trying to explain that to fools. You see, I'm never concerned with my clients, only with their architectural requirements. I consider these as part of my building's theme and problem, as my building's material — just as I consider bricks and steel. Bricks and steel are not my motive. Neither are the clients. Both are only the means of my work. Peter, before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action, not any possible object of your charity. I'll be glad if people who need it find a better manner of living in a house I designed. But that's not the motive of my work. Nor my reason. Nor my reward."

He walked to a window and stood looking out at the lights of the city trembling in the dark river.

"You said yesterday: What architect isn't interested in housing? I hate the whole blasted idea of it. I think it's a worthy undertaking — to provide a decent apartment for a man who earns fifteen dollars a week. But not at the expense of other men. Not if it raises the taxes, raises all the other rents and makes the man who earns forty live in a rat hole. That's what's happening in New York. Nobody can afford a modern apartment — except the very rich and the paupers. Have you seen the converted brownstones in which the average self-supporting couple has to live? Have you seen their closet kitchens and their plumbing? They're forced to live like that — because they're not incompetent enough. They make forty dollars a week and wouldn't be allowed into a housing project. But they're the ones who provide the money for the damn project. They pay the taxes. And the taxes raise their own rent. And they have to move from a converted brownstone into an unconverted one and from that into a railroad flat. I'd have no desire to penalize a man because he's worth only fifteen dollars a week. But I'll be damned if I can see why a man worth forty must be penalized — and penalized in favor of the one who's less competent. Sure, there are a lot of theories on the subject and volumes of discussion. But just look at the results. Still, architects are all for government housing. And have you ever seen an architect who wasn't screaming for planned cities? I'd like to ask him how he can be so sure that the plan adopted will be his own. And if it is, what right has he to impose it on the others? And if it isn't, what happens to his work? I suppose he'll say that he wants neither. He wants a council, a conference, co-operation and collaboration. And the result will be "The March of the Centuries.' Peter, every single one of you on that committee has done better work alone than the eight of you produced collectively. Ask yourself why, sometime."

"I think I know it ... But Cortlandt ... "

"Yes. Cortlandt. Well, I've told you all the things in which I don't believe, so that you'll understand what I want and what right I have to want it. I don't believe in government housing. I don't want to hear anything about its noble purposes. I don't think they're noble. But that, too, doesn't matter. That's not my first concern. Not who lives in the house nor who orders it built. Only the house itself. If it has to be built, it might as well be built right."

"You ... want to build it?"

"In all the years I've worked on this problem, I never hoped to see the results in practical application. I forced myself not to hope. I knew I couldn't expect a chance to show what could be done on a large scale. Your government housing, among other things, has made all building so expensive that private owners can't afford such projects, nor any type of low-rent construction. And I will never be given any job by any government. You've understood that much yourself. You said I couldn't get past Toohey. He's not the only one. I've never been given a job by any group, board, council or committee, public or private, unless some man fought for me, like Kent Lansing. There's a reason for that, but we don't have to discuss it now. I want you to know only that I realize in what manner I need you, so that what we'll do will be a fair exchange."

"You need me?"

"Peter, I love this work. I want to see it erected. I want to make it real, living, functioning, built. But every living thing is integrated. Do you know what that means? Whole, pure, complete, unbroken. Do you know what constitutes an integrating principle? A thought. The one thought, the single thought that created the thing and every part of it. The thought which no one can change or touch. I want to design Cortlandt. I want to see it built. I want to see it built exactly as I design it."

"Howard ... I won't say 'It's nothing.'"

"You understand?"

"Yes."

"I like to receive money for my work. But I can pass that up this time. I like to have people know my work is done by me. But I can pass that up. I like to have tenants made happy by my work. But that doesn't matter too much. The only thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself. My work done my way. Peter, there's nothing in the world that you can offer me, except this. Offer me this and you can have anything I've got to give. My work done my way. A private, personal, selfish, egotistical motivation. That's the only way I function. That's all I am."

"Yes, Howard. I understand. With my whole mind."

"Then here's what I'm offering you: I'll design Cortlandt. You'll put your name on it. You'll keep all the fees. But you'll guarantee that it will be built exactly as I design it."

Keating looked at him and held the glance deliberately, quietly, for a moment.

"All right, Howard." He added: "I waited, to show you that I know exactly what you're asking and what I'm promising."

"You know it won't be easy?"

"I know it will be very terribly difficult."

"It will. Because it's such a large project. Most particularly because it's a government project. There will be so many people involved, each with authority, each wanting to exercise it in some way or another. You'll have a hard battle. You will have to have the courage of my convictions."

"I'll try to live up to that, Howard."

"You won't be able to, unless you understand that I'm giving you a trust which is more sacred — and nobler, if you like the word — than any altruistic purpose you could name. Unless you understand that this is not a favor, that I'm not doing it for you nor for the future tenants, but for myself, and that you have no right to it except on these terms."

"Yes, Howard."

"You'll have to devise your own way of accomplishing it. You'll have to get yourself an ironclad contract with your bosses and then fight every bureaucrat that comes along every five minutes for the next year or more. I will have no guarantee except your word. Wish to give it to me?"

"I give you my word."

Roark took two typewritten sheets of paper from his pocket and handed them to him. "Sign it."

"What's that?"

"A contract between us, stating the terms of our agreement A copy for each of us. It would probably have no legal validity whatever. But I can hold it over your head. I couldn't sue you But I could make this public. If it's prestige you want, you can't allow this to become known. If your courage fails you at any point, remember that you'll lose everything by giving in. But if you'll keep your word — I give you mine — it's written there — that I'll never betray this to anyone. Cortlandt will be yours. On the day when it's finished, I'll send this paper back to you and you can burn it if you wish."

"All right, Howard."

Keating signed, handed the pen to him, and Roark signed.

Keating sat looking at him for a moment, then said slowly, as if trying to distinguish the dim form of some thought of his own:

"Everybody would say you're a fool ... Everybody would say I'm getting everything ... "

"You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I — I'll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt."

"You're getting more than I am, Howard."

"Peter!" The voice was triumphant. "You understand that?"

"Yes ... "

Roark leaned back against a table, and laughed softly; it was the happiest sound Keating had ever heard.

"This will work, Peter. It will work. It will be all right. You've done something wonderful. You haven't spoiled everything by thanking me."

Keating nodded silently.

"Now relax, Peter. Want a drink? We won't discuss any details tonight. Just sit there and get used to me. Stop being afraid of me. Forget everything you said yesterday. This wipes it off. We're starting from the beginning. We're partners now. You have your share to do. It's a legitimate share. This is my idea of cooperation, by the way. You'll handle people. I'll do the building. We'll each do the job we know best, as honestly as we can."

He walked to Keating and extended his hand.

Sitting still, not raising his head, Keating took the hand. His fingers tightened on it for a moment.

When Roark brought him a drink, Keating swallowed three long gulps and sat looking at the room. His fingers were closed firmly about the glass, his arm steady; but the ice tinkled in the liquid once in a while, without apparent motion.

His eyes moved heavily over the room, over Roark's body. He thought, it's not intentional, not just to hurt me, he can't help it, he doesn't even know it — but it's in his whole body, that look of a creature glad to be alive. And he realized he had never actually believed that any living thing could be glad of the gift of existence.

"You're ... so young, Howard ... You're so young ... Once I reproached you for being too old and serious ... Do you remember when you worked for me at Francon's?"

"Drop it, Peter. We've done so well without remembering."

"That's because you're kind. Wait, don't frown. Let me talk. I've got to talk about something. I know, this is what you didn't want to mention. God, I didn't want you to mention it! I had to steel myself against it, that night — against all the things you could throw at me. But you didn't. If it were reversed now and this were my home — can you imagine what I'd do or say? You're not conceited enough."

"Why, no. I'm too conceited. If you want to call it that. I don't make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. I'm an utter egotist."

"Yes. You are. But egotists are not kind. And you are. You're the most egotistical and the kindest man I know. And that doesn't make sense."

"Maybe the concepts don't make sense. Maybe they don't mean what people have been taught to think they mean. But let's drop that now. If you've got to talk of something, let's talk of what we're going to do." He leaned out to look through the open window. "It will stand down there. That dark stretch — that's the site of Cortlandt. When it's done, I'll be able to see it from my window. Then it will be part of the city. Peter, have I ever told you how much I love this city?"

Keating swallowed the rest of the liquid in his glass.

"I think I'd rather go now, Howard. I'm ... no good tonight."

"I'll call you in a few days. We'd better meet here. Don't come to my office. You don't want to be seen there — somebody might guess. By the way, later, when my sketches are done, you'll have to copy them yourself, in your own manner. Some people would recognize my way of drawing."

"Yes ... All right ... "

Keating rose and stood looking uncertainly at his briefcase for a moment, then picked it up. He mumbled some vague words of patting, he took his hat, he walked to the door, then stopped and looked down at his briefcase.

"Howard ... I brought something I wanted to show you."

He walked back into the room and put the briefcase on the table.

"I haven't shown it to anyone." His fingers fumbled, opening the straps. "Not to Mother or Ellsworth Toohey ... I just want you to tell me if there's any ... "

He handed to Roark six of his canvases.

Roark looked at them, one after another. He took a longer time than he needed. When he could trust himself to lift his eyes, he shook his head in silent answer to the word Keating had not pronounced.

"It's too late, Peter," he said gently.

Keating nodded. "Guess I ... knew that."

When Keating had gone, Roark leaned against the door, closing his eyes. He was sick with pity.

He had never felt this before — not when Henry Cameron collapsed in the office at his feet, not when he saw Steven Mallory sobbing on a bed before him. Those moments had been clean. But this was pity — this complete awareness of a man without worth or hope, this sense of finality, of the not to be redeemed. There was shame in this feeling — his own shame that he should have to pronounce such judgment upon a man, that he should know an emotion which contained no shred of respect.

This is pity, he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.

9.

THEY sat on the shore of the lake — Wynand slouched on a boulder — Roark stretched out on the ground — Dominique sitting straight, her body rising stiffly from the pale blue circle of her skirt on the grass.

The Wynand house stood on the hill above them. The earth spread out in terraced fields and rose gradually to make the elevation of the hill. The house was a shape of horizontal rectangles rising toward a slashing vertical projection; a group of diminishing setbacks, each a separate room, its size and form making the successive steps in a series of interlocking floor lines. It was as if from the wide living room on the first level a hand had moved slowly, shaping the next steps by a sustained touch, then had stopped, had continued in separate movements, each shorter, brusquer, and had ended, torn off, remaining somewhere in the sky. So that it seemed as if the slow rhythm of the rising fields had been picked up, stressed, accelerated and broken into the staccato chords of the finale.

"I like to look at it from here," said Wynand. "I spent all day here yesterday, watching the light change on it. When you design a building, Howard, do you know exactly what the sun will do to it at any moment of the day from any angle? Do you control the sun?"

"Sure," said Roark without raising his head. "Unfortunately, I can't control it here. Move over, Gail. You're in my way. I like the sun on my back."

Wynand let himself flop down into the grass. Roark lay stretched on his stomach, his face buried on his arm, the orange hair on the white shirt sleeve, one hand extended before him, palm pressed to the ground. Dominique looked at the blades of grass between his fingers. The fingers moved once in a while, crushing the grass with lazy, sensuous pleasure.

The lake spread behind them, a flat sheet darkening at the edges, as if the distant trees were moving in to enclose it for the evening. The sun cut a glittering band across the water. Dominique looked up at the house and thought that she would like to stand there at a window and look down and see this one white figure stretched on a deserted shore, his hand on the ground, spent, emptied, at the foot of that hill.

She had lived in the house for a month. She had never thought she would. Then Roark had said: "The house will be ready for you in ten days, Mrs. Wynand," and she had answered: "Yes, Mr. Roark."

She accepted the house, the touch of the stair railings under her hand, the walls that enclosed the air she breathed. She accepted the light switches she pressed in the evening, and the light firm wires he had laid out through the walls; the water that ran when she turned a tap, from conduits he had planned; the warmth of an open fire on August evenings, before a fireplace built stone by stone from his drawing. She thought: Every moment ... every need of my existence ... She thought: Why not? It's the same with my body — lungs, blood vessels, nerves, brain — under the same control. She felt one with the house.

She accepted the nights when she lay in Wynand's arms and opened her eyes to see the shape of the bedroom Roark had designed, and she set her teeth against a racking pleasure that was part answer, part mockery of the unsatisfied hunger in her body, and surrendered to it, not knowing what man gave her this, which one of them, or both.

Wynand watched her as she walked across a room, as she descended the stairs, as she stood at a window. She had heard him saying to her: "I didn't know a house could be designed for a woman, like a dress. You can't see yourself here as I do, you can't see how completely this house is yours. Every angle, every part of every room is a setting for you. It's scaled to your height, to your body. Even the texture of the walls goes with the texture of your skin in an odd way. It's the Stoddard Temple, but built for a single person, and it's mine. This is what I wanted. The city can't touch you here. I've always felt that the city would take you away from me. It gave me everything I have. I don't know why I feel at times that it will demand payment some day. But here you're safe and you're mine." She wanted to cry: Gail, I belong to him here as I've never belonged to him.

Roark was the only guest Wynand allowed in their new home. She accepted Roark's visits to them on week ends. That was the hardest to accept. She knew he did not come to torture her, but simply because Wynand asked him and he liked being with Wynand. She remembered saying to him in the evening, her hand on the stair railing, on the steps of the stairs leading up to her bedroom: "Come down to breakfast whenever you wish, Mr. Roark. Just press the button in the dining room."

"Thank you. Mrs. Wynand. Good night."

Once, she saw him alone, for a moment. It was early morning; she had not slept all night, thinking of him in a room across the hall; she had come out before the house was awake. She walked down the hill and she found relief in the unnatural stillness of the earth around her, the stillness of full light without sun, of leaves without motion, of a luminous, waiting silence. She heard steps behind her, she stopped, she leaned against a tree trunk. He had a bathing suit thrown over his shoulder, he was going down to swim in the lake. He stopped before her, and they stood still with the rest of the earth, looking at each other. He said nothing, turned, and went on. She remained leaning against the tree, and after a while she walked back to the house.

Now, sitting by the lake, she heard Wynand saying to him:

"You look like the laziest creature in the world, Howard."

"I am."

"I've never seen anyone relax like that."

"Try staying awake for three nights in succession."

"I told you to get here yesterday."

"Couldn't."

"Are you going to pass out right here?"

"I'd like to. This is wonderful." He lifted his head, his eyes laughing, as if he had not seen the building on the hill, as if he were not speaking of it. "This is the way I'd like to die, stretched out on some shore like this, just close my eyes and never come back."

She thought: He thinks what I'm thinking — we still have that together — Gail wouldn't understand — not he and Gail, for this once — he and I.

Wynand said: "You damn fool. This is not like you, not even as a joke. You're killing yourself over something. What?"

"Ventilator shafts, at the moment. Very stubborn ventilator shafts."

"For whom?"

"Clients ... I have all sorts of clients right now."

"Do you have to work nights?"

"Yes — for these particular people. Very special work. Can't even bring it into the office."

"What are you talking about?"

"Nothing. Don't pay any attention. I'm half asleep."

She thought: This is the tribute to Gail, the confidence of surrender — he relaxes like a cat — and cats don't relax except with people they like.

"I'll kick you upstairs after dinner and lock the door," said Wynand, "and leave you there to sleep twelve hours."

"All right."

"Want to get up early? Let's go for a swim before sunrise."

"Mr. Roark is tired, Gail," said Dominique, her voice sharp.

Roark raised himself on an elbow to look at her. She saw his eyes, direct, understanding.

"You're acquiring the bad habits of all commuters, Gail," she said, "imposing your country hours on guests from the city who are not used to them." She thought: Let it be mine — that one moment when you were walking to the lake — don't let Gail take that also, like everything else. "You can't order Mr. Roark around as if he were an employee of the Banner."

"I don't know anyone on earth I'd rather order around than Mr. Roark," said Wynand gaily, "whenever I can get away with it."

"You're getting away with it."

"I don't mind taking orders, Mrs. Wynand," said Roark. "Not from a man as capable as Gail."

Let me win this time, she thought, please let me win this time — it means nothing to you — it's senseless and it means nothing at all — but refuse him, refuse him for the sake of the memory of a moment's pause that had not belonged to him.

"I think you should rest, Mr. Roark. You should sleep late tomorrow. I'll tell the servants not to disturb you."

"Why, no, thanks, I'll be all right in a few hours, Mrs. Wynand. I like to swim before breakfast. Knock at the door when you're ready, Gail, and we'll go down together."

She looked over the spread of lake and hills, with not a sign of men, not another house anywhere, just water, trees and sun, a world of their own, and she thought he was right — they belonged together — the three of them.

The drawings of Cortlandt Homes presented six buildings, fifteen stories high, each made in the shape of an irregular star with arms extending from a central shaft. The shafts contained elevators, stairways, heating systems and all the utilities. The apartments radiated from the center in the form of extended triangles. The space between the arms allowed light and air from three sides. The ceilings were pre-cast; the inner walls were of plastic tile that required no painting or plastering; all pipes and wires were laid out in metal ducts at the edge of the floors, to be opened and replaced, when necessary, without costly demolition; the kitchens and bathrooms were prefabricated as complete units; the inner partitions were of light metal that could be folded into the walls to provide one large room or pulled out to divide it; there were few halls or lobbies to clean, a minimum of cost and labor required for the maintenance of the place. The entire plan was a composition in triangles. The buildings, of poured concrete, were a complex modeling of simple structural features; there was no ornament; none was needed; the shapes had the beauty of sculpture.

Ellsworth Toohey did not look at the plans which Keating had spread out on his desk. He stared at the perspective drawings. He stared, his mouth open.

Then he threw his head back and howled with laughter.

"Peter," he said, "you're a genius."

He added: "I think you know exactly what I mean." Keating looked at him blankly, without curiosity. "You've succeeded in what I've spent a lifetime trying to achieve, in what centuries of men and bloody battles behind us have tried to achieve. I take my hat off to you, Peter, in awe and admiration."

"Look at the plans," said Keating listlessly. "It will rent for ten dollars a unit."

"I haven't the slightest doubt that it will. I don't have to look. Oh yes, Peter, this will go through. Don't worry. This will be accepted. My congratulations, Peter."

"You God-damn fool!" said Gail Wynand. "What are you up to?"

He threw to Roark a copy of the Banner, folded at an inside page. The page bore a photograph captioned: "Architects' drawing of Cortlandt Homes, the $15,000,000 Federal Housing Project to be built in Astoria, L. I., Keating & Dumont, architects."

Roark glanced at the photograph and asked: "What do you mean?"

"You know damn well what I mean. Do you think I picked the things in my art gallery by their signatures? If Peter Keating designed this, I'll eat every copy of today's Banner."

"Peter Keating designed this, Gail."

"You fool. What are you after?"

"If I don't want to understand what you're talking about, I won't understand it, no matter what you say."

"Oh, you might, if I run a story to the effect that a certain housing project was designed by Howard Roark, which would make a swell exclusive story and a joke on one Mr. Toohey who's the boy behind the boys on most of those damn projects."

"You publish that and I'll sue hell out of you."

"You really would?"

"I would. Drop it, Gail. Don't you see I don't want to discuss it?"

Later, Wynand showed the picture to Dominique and asked:

"Who designed this?"

She looked at it. "Of course," was all she answered.

"What kind of 'changing world,' Alvah? Changing to what? From what? Who's doing the changing?"

Parts of Alvah Scarret's face looked anxious, but most of it was impatient, as he glanced at the proofs of his editorial on "Motherhood in a Changing World," which lay on Wynand's desk.

"What the hell, Gail," he muttered indifferently.

"That's what I want to know — what the hell?" He picked up the proof and read aloud: "'The world we have known is gone and done for and it's no use kidding ourselves about it. We cannot go back, we must go forward. The mothers of today must set the example by broadening their own emotional view and raising their selfish love for their own children to a higher plane, to include everybody's little children. Mothers must love every kid in their block, in their street, in their city, county, state, nation and the whole wide, wide world — just exactly as much as their own little Mary or Johnny.'" Wynand wrinkled his nose fastidiously. "Alvah? ... It's all right to dish out crap. But — this kind of crap?"

Alvah Scarret would not look at him.

"You're out of step with the times, Gail," he said. His voice was low; it had a tone of warning — as of something baring its teeth, tentatively, just for future reference.

This was so odd a behavior for Alvah Scarret that Wynand lost all desire to pursue the conversation. He drew a line across the editorial, but the blue pencil stroke seemed tired and ended in a blur. He said: "Go and bat out something else, Alvah."

Scarret rose, picked up the strip of paper, turned and left the room without a word.

Wynand looked after him, puzzled, amused and slightly sick.

He had known for several years the trend which his paper had embraced gradually, imperceptibly, without any directive from him. He had noticed the cautious "slanting" of news stories, the half-hints, the vague allusions, the peculiar adjectives peculiarly placed, the stressing of certain themes, the insertion of political conclusions where none was needed. If a story concerned a dispute between employer and employee, the employer was made to appear guilty, simply through wording, no matter what the facts presented. If a sentence referred to the past, it was always "our dark past" or "our dead past." If a statement involved someone's personal motive, it was always "goaded by selfishness" or "egged by greed." A crossword puzzle gave the definition of "obsolescent individuals" and the word came out as "capitalists."

Wynand had shrugged about it, contemptuously amused. His staff, he thought, was well trained: if this was the popular slang of the day, his boys assumed it automatically. It meant nothing at all. He kept it off the editorial page and the rest did not matter. It was no more than a fashion of the moment — and he had survived many changing fashions.

He felt no concern over the "We Don't Read Wynand" campaign. He obtained one of their men's-room stickers, pasted it on the windshield of his own Lincoln, added the words: "We don't either," and kept it there long enough to be discovered and snapped by a photographer from a neutral paper. In the course of his career he had been fought, damned, denounced by the greatest publishers of his time, by the shrewdest coalitions of financial power. He could not summon any apprehension over the activities of somebody named Gus Webb.

He knew that the Banner was losing some of its popularity. "A temporary fad," he told Scarret, shrugging. He would run a limerick contest, or a series of coupons for victrola records, see a slight spurt of circulation and promptly forget the matter.

He could not rouse himself to full action. He had never felt a greater desire to work. He entered his office each morning with important eagerness. But within an hour he found himself studying the joints of the paneling on the walls and reciting nursery rhymes in his mind. It was not boredom, not the satisfaction of a yawn, but more like the gnawing pull of wishing to yawn and not quite making it. He could not say that he disliked his work. It had merely become distasteful; not enough to force a decision; not enough to make him clench his fists; just enough to contract his nostrils.

He thought dimly that the cause lay in that new trend of the public taste. He saw no reason why he should not follow it and play on it as expertly as he had played on all other fads. But he could not follow. He felt no moral scruples. It was not a positive stand rationally taken; not defiance in the name of a cause of importance; just a fastidious feeling, something pertaining almost to chastity: the hesitation one feels before putting one's foot down into muck. He thought: It doesn't matter — it will not last — I'll be back when the wave swings on to another theme — I think I'd rather sit this one out.

He could not say why the encounter with Alvah Scarret gave him a feeling of uneasiness, sharper than usual. He thought it was funny that Alvah should have switched to that line of tripe. But there had been something else; there had been a personal quality in Alvah's exit; almost a declaration that he saw no necessity to consider the boss's opinion any longer.

I ought to fire Alvah, he thought — and then laughed at himself, aghast: fire Alvah Scarret? — one might as well think of stopping the earth — or — of the unthinkable — of closing the Banner.

But through the months of that summer and fall, there were days when he loved the Banner. Then he sat at this desk, with his hand on the pages spread before him, fresh ink smearing his palm, and he smiled as he saw the name of Howard Roark in the pages of the Banner.

The word had come down from his office to every department concerned: Plug Howard Roark. In the art section, the real-estate section, the editorials, the columns, mentions of Roark and his buildings began to appear regularly. There were not many occasions when one could give publicity to an architect, and buildings had little news value, but the Banner managed to throw Roark's name at the public under every kind of ingenious pretext. Wynand edited every word of it. The material was startling on the pages of the Banner: it was written in good taste. There were no sensational stories, no photographs of Roark at breakfast, no human interest, no attempts to sell a man; only a considered, gracious tribute to the greatness of an artist.

He never spoke of it to Roark, and Roark never mentioned it. They did not discuss the Banner.

Coming home to his new house in the evening, Wynand saw the Banner on the living room table every night. He had not allowed it in his home since his marriage. He smiled, when he saw it for the first time, and said nothing.

Then he spoke of it, one evening. He turned the pages until he came to an article on the general theme of summer resorts, most of which was a description of Monadnock Valley. He raised his head to glance at Dominique across the room; she sat on the floor by the fireplace. He said:

"Thank you, dear."

"For what, Gail?"

"For understanding when I would be glad to see the Banner in my house."

He walked to her and sat down on the floor beside her. He held her thin shoulders in the curve of his arm. He said:

"Think of all the politicians, movie stars, visiting grand dukes and sash weight murderers whom the Banner has trumpeted all these years. Think of my great crusades about street-car companies, red-light districts and home-grown vegetables. For once, Dominique, I can say what I believe."

"Yes, Gail ... "

"All this power I wanted, reached and never used.,. Now they'll see what I can do. I'll force them to recognize him as he should be recognized. I'll give him the fame he deserves. Public opinion? Public opinion is what I make it."

"Do you think he wants this?"

"Probably not. I don't care. He needs it and he's going to get it. I want him to have it. As an architect, he's public property. He can't stop a newspaper from writing about him if it wants to."

"All that copy on him — do you write it yourself?"

"Most of it."

"Gail, what a great journalist you could have been."

The campaign brought results, of a kind he had not expected. The general public remained blankly indifferent. But in the intellectual circles, in the art world, in the profession, people were laughing at Roark. Comments were reported to Wynand: "Roark? Oh yes, Wynand's pet."

"The Banner's glamour boy."

"The genius of the yellow press."

"The Banner is now selling art — send two box tops or a reasonable facsimile."

"Wouldn't you know it? That's what I've always thought of Roark — the kind of talent fit for the Wynand papers."

"We'll see," said Wynand contemptuously — and continued his private crusade.

He gave Roark every commission of importance whose owners were open to pressure. Since spring, he had brought to Roark's office the contracts for a yacht club on the Hudson, an office building, two private residences. "I'll get you more than you can handle," he said. "I'll make you catch up with all the years they've made you waste."

Austen Heller said to Roark one evening: "If I may be so presumptuous, I think you need advice, Howard. Yes, of course, I mean this preposterous business of Mr. Gail Wynand. You and he as inseparable friends upsets every rational concept I've ever held. After all, there are distinct classes of humanity — no, I'm not talking Toohey's language — but there are certain boundary lines among men which cannot be crossed."

"Yes, there are. But nobody has ever given the proper statement of where they must be drawn."

"Well, the friendship is your own business. But there's one aspect of it that must be stopped — and you're going to listen to me for once."

"I'm listening."

"I think it's fine, all those commissions he's dumping on you. I'm sure he'll be rewarded for that and lifted several rungs in hell, where he's certain to go. But he must stop that publicity he's splashing you with in the Banner. You've got to make him stop. Don't you know that the support of the Wynand papers is enough to discredit anyone?" Roark said nothing. "It's hurting you professionally, Howard."

"I know it is."

"Are you going to make him stop?"

"No."

"But why in blazes?"

"I said I'd listen, Austen. I didn't say I'd speak about him."

Late one afternoon in the fall Wynand came to Roark's office, as he often did at the end of a day, and when they walked out together, he said: "It's a nice evening. Let's go for a walk, Howard. There's a piece of property I want you to see."

He led the way to Hell's Kitchen. They walked around a great rectangle — two blocks between Ninth Avenue and Eleventh, five blocks from north to south. Roark saw a grimy desolation of tenements, sagging hulks of what had been red brick, crooked doorways, rotting boards, strings of gray underclothing in narrow air shafts, not as a sign of life, but as a malignant growth of decomposition.

"You own that?" Roark said.

"All of it."

"Why show it to me? Don't you know that making an architect look at that is worse than showing him a field of unburied corpses?"

Wynand pointed to the white-tiled front of a new diner across the street: "Let's go in there."

They sat by the window, at a clean metal table, and Wynand ordered coffee. He seemed as graciously at home as in the best restaurants of the city; his elegance had an odd quality here — it did not insult the place, but seemed to transform it, like the presence of a king who never alters his manner, yet makes a palace of any house he enters. He leaned forward with his elbows on the table, watching Roark through the steam of the coffee, his eyes narrowed, amused. He moved one finger to point across the

street.

"That's the first piece of property I ever bought, Howard. It was a long time ago. I haven't touched it since."

"What were you saving it for?"

"You."

Roark raised the heavy white mug of coffee to his lips, his eyes holding Wynand's, narrowed and mocking in answer. He knew that Wynand wanted eager questions and he waited patiently instead.

"You stubborn bastard," Wynand chuckled, surrendering. "All right. Listen. This is where I was born. When I could begin to think of buying real estate, I bought this piece. House by house. Block by block. It took a long time. I could have bought better property and made money fast, as I did later, but I waited until I had this. Even though I knew I would make no use of it for years. You see, I had decided then that this is where the Wynand Building would stand some day ... All right, keep still all you want — I've seen what your face looked like just now."

"Oh, God, Gail! ... "

"What's the matter? Want to do it? Want it pretty badly?"

"I think I'd almost give my life for it — only then I couldn't build it. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"Something like that. I won't demand your life. But it's nice to shock the breath out of you for once. Thank you for being shocked. It means you understood what the Wynand Building implies. The highest structure in the city. And the greatest."

"I know that's what you'd want."

"I won't build it yet. But I've waited for it all these years. And now you'll wait with me. Do you know that I really like to torture you, in a way? That I always want to?"

"I know."

"I brought you here only to tell you that it will be yours when I build it. I have waited, because I felt I was not ready for it. Since I met you, I knew I was ready — and I don't mean because you're an architect. But we'll have to wait a little longer, just another year or two, till the country gets back on its feet. This is the wrong time for building. Of course, everybody says that the day of the skyscraper is past. That it's obsolete. I don't give a damn about that. I'll make it pay for itself. The Wynand Enterprises have offices scattered all over town. I want them all in one building. And I hold enough over the heads of enough important people to force them to rent all the rest of the space. Perhaps, it will be the last skyscraper built in New York. So much the better. The greatest and the last."

Roark sat looking across the street, at the streaked ruins.

"To be torn down, Howard. All of it. Razed off. The place where I did not run things. To be supplanted by a park and the Wynand Building ... The best structures of New York are wasted because they can't be seen, squeezed against one another in blocks. My building will be seen. It will reclaim the whole neighborhood. Let the others follow. Not the right location, they'll say? Who makes right locations? They'll see. This might become the new center of the city — when the city starts living again. I planned it when the Banner was nothing but a fourth-rate rag. I haven't miscalculated, have I? I knew what I would become ... A monument to my life, Howard. Remember what you said when you came to my office for the first time? A statement of my life. There were things in my past which I have not liked. But all the things of which I was proud will remain. After I am gone that building will be Gail Wynand ... I knew I'd find the right architect when the time came. I didn't know he would be much more than just an architect I hired. I'm glad it happened this way. It's a kind of reward. It's as if I had been forgiven. My last and greatest achievement will also be your greatest. It will be not only my monument but the best gift I could offer to the man who means most to me on earth. Don't frown, you know that's what you are to me. Look at that horror across the street. I want to sit here and watch you looking at it. That's what we're going to destroy — you and I. That's what it will rise from — the Wynand Building by Howard Roark. I've waited for it from the day I was born. From the day you were born, you've waited for your one great chance. There it is, Howard, across the street. Yours — from me."

10.

IT HAD stopped raining, but Peter Keating wished it would start again. The pavements glistened, there were dark blotches on the walls of buildings, and since it did not come from the sky, it looked as if the city were bathed in cold sweat. The air was heavy with untimely darkness, disquieting like premature old age, and there were yellow puddles of light in windows. Keating had missed the rain, but he felt wet, from his bones out.

He had left his office early, and he walked home. The office seemed unreal to him, as it had for a long time. He could find reality only in the evenings, when he slipped furtively up to Roark's apartment. He did not slip and it was not furtive, he told himself angrily — and knew that it was; even though he walked through the lobby of the Enright House and rode up in an elevator, like any man on a legitimate errand. It was the vague anxiety,' the impulse to glance around at every face, the fear of being recognized; it was a load of anonymous guilt, not toward any person, but the more frightening sense of guilt without a victim.

He took from Roark rough sketches for every detail of Cortlandt — to have them translated into working drawings by his own staff. He listened to Roark's instructions. He memorized arguments to offer his employers against every possible objection. He absorbed like a recording machine. Afterward, when he gave explanations to his draftsmen, his voice sounded like a disk being played. He did not mind. He questioned nothing.

Now he walked slowly, through the streets full of rain that would not come. He looked up and saw empty space where the towers of familiar buildings had been; it did not look like fog or clouds, but like a solid spread of gray sky that had worked a gigantic, soundless destruction. That sight of buildings vanishing through the sky had always made him uneasy. He walked on, looking down.

It was the shoes that he noticed first. He knew that he must have seen the woman's face, that the instinct of self-preservation had jerked his glance away from it and let his conscious perception begin with the shoes. They were flat, brown oxfords, offensively competent, too well shined on the muddy pavement, contemptuous of rain and of beauty. His eyes went to the brown skirt, to the tailored jacket, costly and cold like a uniform, to the hand with a hole in the finger of an expensive glove, to the lapel that bore a preposterous ornament — a bow-legged Mexican with red-enameled pants — stuck there in a clumsy attempt at pertness; to the thin lips, to the glasses, to the eyes.

"Katie," he said.

She stood by the window of a bookstore; her glance hesitated halfway between recognition and a book title she had been examining; then, with recognition evident in the beginning of a smile, the glance went back to the book title, to finish and make an efficient note of it. Then her eyes returned to Keating. Her smile was pleasant; not as an effort over bitterness, and not as welcome; just pleasant.

"Why, Peter Keating," she said. "Hello, Peter."

"Katie ... " He could not extend his hand or move closer to her.

"Yes, imagine running into you like this, why, New York is just like any small town, though I suppose without the better features." There was no strain in her voice.

"What are you doing here? I thought ... I heard ... " He knew she had a good job in Washington and had moved there two years ago.

"Just a business trip. Have to dash right back tomorrow. Can't say that I mind it, either. New York seems so dead, so slow."

"Well, I'm glad you like your job ... if you mean ... isn't that what you mean?"

"Like my job? What a silly thing to say. Washington is the only grownup place in the country. I don't see how people can live anywhere else. What have you been doing, Peter? I saw your name in the paper the other day, it was something important."

"I ... I'm working ... You haven't changed much, Katie, not really, have you? — I mean, your face — you look like you used to — in a way ... "

"It's the only face I've got. Why do people always have to talk about changes if they haven't seen each other for a year or two? I ran into Grace Parker yesterday and she had to go into an inventory of my appearance. I could just hear every word before she said it — 'You look so nice — not a day older, really, Catherine.' People are provincial."

"But ... you do look nice ... It's ... it's nice to see you ... "

"I'm glad to see you, too. How is the building industry?"

"I don't know ... What you read about must have been Cortlandt ... I'm doing Cortlandt Homes, a housing ... "

"Yes, of course. That was it. I think it's very good for you, Peter. To do a job, not just for private profit and a fat fee, but with a social purpose. I think architects should stop money grubbing and give a little time to government work and broader objectives."

"Why, most of them would grab it if they could get it, it's one of the hardest rackets to break into, it's a closed ... "

"Yes, yes, I know. It's simply impossible to make the laymen understand our methods of working, and that's why all we hear are all those stupid, boring complaints. You mustn't read the Wynand papers, Peter."

"I never read the Wynand papers. What on earth has it got to do with ... Oh, I ... I don't know what we're talking about. Katie."

He thought that she owed him nothing, or every kind of anger and scorn she could command; and yet there was a human obligation she still had toward him: she owed him an evidence of strain in this meeting. There was none.

"We really should have a great deal to talk about, Peter." The words would have lifted him, had they not been pronounced so easily. "But we can't stand here all day." She glanced at her wrist watch. "I've got an hour or so, suppose you take me somewhere for a cup of tea, you could use some hot tea, you look frozen."

That was her first comment on his appearance; that, and a glance without reaction. He thought, even Roark had been shocked, had acknowledged the change.

"Yes, Katie. That will be wonderful. I ... " He wished she had not been the one to suggest it; it was the right thing for them to do; he wished she had not been able to think of the right thing; not so quickly. "Let's find a nice, quiet place ... "

"We'll go to Thorpe's. There's one around the corner. They have the nicest watercress sandwiches."

It was she who took his arm to cross the street, and dropped it again on the other side. The gesture had been automatic. She had not noticed it.

There was a counter of pastry and candy inside the door of Thorpe's. A large bowl of sugar-coated almonds, green and white, glared at Keating. The place smelled of orange icing. The lights were dim, a stuffy orange haze; the odor made the light seem sticky. The tables were too small, set close together.

He sat, looking down at a paper lace doily on a black glass table top. But when he lifted his eyes to Catherine, he knew that no caution was necessary: she did not react to his scrutiny; her expression remained the same, whether he studied her face or that of the woman at the next table; she seemed to have no consciousness of her own person.

It was her mouth that had changed most, he thought; the lips were drawn in, with only a pale edge of flesh left around the imperious line of their opening; a mouth to issue orders, he thought, but not big orders or cruel orders; just mean little ones — about plumbing and disinfectants. He saw the fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes — a skin like paper that had been crumpled and then smoothed out.

She was telling him about her work in Washington, and he listened bleakly. He did not hear the words, only the tone of her voice, dry and crackling.

A waitress in a starched orchid uniform came to take their orders. Catherine snapped:

"The tea sandwiches special. Please."

Keating said:

"A cup of coffee." He saw Catherine's eyes on him, and in a sudden panic of embarrassment, feeling he must not confess that he couldn't swallow a bite of food now, feeling that the confession would anger her, he added: "A ham and swiss on rye, I guess."

"Peter, what ghastly food habits! Wait a minute, waitress. You don't want that, Peter. It's very bad for you. You should have a fresh salad. And coffee is bad at this time of the day. Americans drink too much coffee."

"All right," said Keating.

"Tea and a combination salad, waitress ... And — oh, waitress! — no bread with the salad — you're gaining weight, Peter — some diet crackers. Please."

Keating waited until the orchid uniform had moved away, and then he said, hopefully:

"I have changed, haven't I, Katie? I do look pretty awful?" Even a disparaging comment would be a personal link.

"What? Oh, I guess so. It isn't healthy. But Americans know nothing whatever about the proper nutritional balance. Of course, men do make too much fuss over mere appearance. They're much vainer than women. It's really women who're taking charge, of all productive work now, and women will build a better world."

"How does one build a better world, Katie?"

"Well, if you consider the determining factor, which is, of course, economic ... "

"No, I ... I didn't ask it that way ... Katie, I've been very unhappy."

"I'm sorry to hear that. One hears so many people say that nowadays. That's because it's a transition period and people feel rootless. But you've always had a bright disposition, Peter."

"Do you ... do you remember what I was like?"

"Goodness, Peter, you talk as if it had been sixty-five years ago."

"But so many things happened. I ... " He took the plunge; he had to take it; the crudest way seemed the easiest. "I was married. And divorced."

"Yes, I read about that. I was glad when you were divorced." He leaned forward. "If your wife was the kind of woman who could marry Gail Wynand, you were lucky to get rid of her."

The tone of chronic impatience that ran words together had not altered to pronounce this. He had to believe it: this was all the subject meant to her.

"Katie, you're very tactful and kind ... but drop the act," he said, knowing in dread that it was not an act. "Drop it ... Tell me what you thought of me then ... Say everything ... I don't mind ... I want to hear it ... Don't you understand? I'll feel better if I hear it."

"Surely, Peter, you don't want me to start some sort of recriminations? I'd say it was conceited of you, if it weren't so childish."

"What did you feel — that day — when I didn't come — and then you heard I was married?" He did not know what instinct drove him, through numbness, to be brutal as the only means left to him. "Katie, you suffered then?"

"Yes, of course I suffered. All young people do in such situations. It seems foolish afterward. I cried, and I screamed some dreadful things at Uncle Ellsworth, and he had to call a doctor to give me a sedative, and then weeks afterward I fainted on the street one day without any reason, which was really disgraceful. All the conventional things, I suppose, everybody goes through them, like measles. Why should I have expected to be exempt? — as Uncle Ellsworth said." He thought that he had not known there was something worse than a living memory of pain: a dead one. "And of course we knew it was for the best. I can't imagine myself married to you."

"You can't imagine it, Katie?"

"That is, nor to anyone else. It wouldn't have worked, Peter. I'm temperamentally unsuited to domesticity. It's too selfish and narrow. Of course, I understand what you feel just now and I appreciate it. It's only human that you should feel something like remorse, since you did what is known as jilted me." He winced. "You see how stupid those things sound. It's natural for you to be a little contrite — a normal reflex — but we must look at it objectively, we're grownup, rational people, nothing is too serious, we can't really help what we do, we're conditioned that way, we just charge it off to experience and go on from there."

"Katie! You're not talking some fallen girl out of her problem. You're speaking about yourself."

"Is there any essential difference? Everybody's problems are the same, just like everybody's emotions."

He saw her nibbling a thin strip of bread with a smear of green, and noticed that his order had been served. He moved his fork about in his salad bowl, and he made himself bite into a gray piece of diet cracker. Then he discovered how strange it was when one lost the knack of eating automatically and had to do it by full conscious effort; the cracker seemed inexhaustible; he could not finish the process of chewing; he moved his jaws without reducing the amount of gritty pulp in his mouth.

"Katie ... for six years ... I thought of how I'd ask your forgiveness some day. And now I have the chance, but I won't ask it. It seems ... it seems beside the point. I know it's horrible to say that, but that's how it seems to me. It was the worst thing I ever did in my life — but not because I hurt you. I did hurt you, Katie, and maybe more than you know yourself. But that's not my worst guilt ... Katie, I wanted to marry you. It was the only thing I ever really wanted. And that's the sin that can't be forgiven — that I hadn't done what I wanted. It feels so dirty and pointless and monstrous, as one feels about insanity, because there's no sense to it, no dignity, nothing but pain — and wasted pain ... Katie, why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world — to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want. As I wanted to marry you. Not as I want to sleep with some woman or get drunk or get my name in the papers. Those things — they're not even desires — they're things people do to escape from desires — because it's such a big responsibility, really to want something."

"Peter, what you're saying is very ugly and selfish."

"Maybe. I don't know. I've always had to tell you the truth. About everything. Even if you didn't ask. I had to."

"Yes. You did. It was a commendable trait. You were a charming boy, Peter."

It was the bowl of sugar-coated almonds on the counter that hurt him, he thought in a dull anger. The almonds were green and white; they had no business being green and white at this time of the year; the colors of St. Patrick's Day — then there was always candy like that in all the store windows — and St. Patrick's Day meant spring — no, better than spring, that moment of wonderful anticipation just before spring is to begin.

"Katie, I won't say that I'm still in love with you. I don't know whether I am or not. I've never asked myself. It wouldn't matter now. I'm not saying this because I hope for anything or think of trying or ... I know only that I loved you, Katie, I loved you, whatever I made of it, even if this is how I've got to say it for the last time, I loved you, Katie."

She looked at him — and she seemed pleased. Not stirred, not happy, not pitying; but pleased in a casual way. He thought: If she were completely the spinster, the frustrated social worker, as people think of those women, the kind who would scorn sex in the haughty conceit of her own virtue, that would still be recognition, if only in hostility. But this — this amused tolerance seemed to admit that romance was only human, one had to take it, like everybody else, it was a popular weakness of no great consequence — she was gratified as she would have been gratified by the same words from any other man — it was like that red-enamel Mexican on her lapel, a contemptuous concession to people's demand of vanity.

"Katie ... Katie, let's say that this doesn't count — this, now — it's past counting anyway, isn't it? This can't touch what it was like, can it, Katie? ... People always regret that the past is so final, that nothing can change it — but I'm glad it's so. We can't spoil it. We can think of the past, can't we? Why shouldn't we? I mean, as you said, like grownup people, not fooling ourselves, not trying to hope, but only to look back at it ... Do you remember when I came to your house in New York for the first time? You looked so thin and small, and your hair hung every which way. I told you I would never love anyone else. I held you on my lap, you didn't weigh anything at all, and I told you I would never love anyone else. And you said you knew it."

"I remember."

"When we were together ... Katie, I'm ashamed of so many things, but not of one moment when we were together. When I asked you to marry me — no, I never asked you to marry me — I just said we were engaged — and you said 'yes' — it was on a park bench — it was snowing ... "

"Yes."

"You had funny woolen gloves. Like mittens. I remember — there were drops of water in the fuzz — round — like crystal — they flashed — it was because a car passed by."

"Yes, I think it's agreeable to look back occasionally. But one's perspective widens. One grows richer spiritually with the years."

He kept silent for a long time. Then he said, his voice flat:

"I'm sorry."

"Why? You're very sweet, Peter. I've always said men are the sentimentalists."

He thought: It's not an act — one can't put on an act like that — unless it's an act inside, for oneself, and then there is no limit, no way out, no reality ...

She went on talking to him, and after a while it was about Washington again. He answered when it was necessary.

He thought that he had believed it was a simple sequence, the past and the present, and if there was loss in the past one was compensated by pain in the present, and pain gave it a form of immortality — but he had not known that one could destroy like this, kill retroactively — so that to her it had never existed.

She glanced at her wrist watch and gave a little gasp of impatience,

"I'm late already. I must run along."

He said heavily:

"Do you mind if I don't go with you, Katie? It's not rudeness. I just think it's better."

"But of course. Not at all. I'm quite able to find my way in the streets and there's no need for formalities among old friends." She added, gathering her bag and gloves, crumpling a paper napkin into a ball, dropping it neatly into her teacup: "I'll give you a ring next time I'm in town and we'll have a bite together again. Though I can't promise when that will be. I'm so busy, I have to go so many places, last month it was Detroit and next week I'm flying to St. Louis, but when they shoot me out to New York again, I'll ring you up, so long, Peter, it was ever so nice."

11.

GAIL WYNAND looked at the shining wood of the yacht deck. The wood and a brass doorknob that had become a smear of fire gave him a sense of everything around him: the miles of space filled with sun, between the burning spreads of sky and ocean. It was February, and the yacht lay still, her engines idle, in the southern Pacific.

He leaned on the rail and looked down at Roark in the water. Roark floated on his back, his body stretched into a straight line, arms spread, eyes closed. The tan of his skin implied a month of days such as this. Wynand thought that this was the way he liked to apprehend space and time: through the power of his yacht, through the tan of Roark's skin or the sunbrown of his own arms folded before him on the rail.

He had not sailed his yacht for several years. This time he had wanted Roark to be his only guest. Dominique was left behind.

Wynand had said: "You're killing yourself, Howard. You've been going at a pace nobody can stand for long. Ever since Monadnock, isn't it? Think you'd have the courage to perform the feat most difficult for you — to rest?"

He was astonished when Roark accepted without argument. Roark laughed:

"I'm not running away from my work, if that's what surprises you. I know when to stop — and I can't stop, unless it's completely. I know I've overdone it. I've been wasting too much paper lately and doing awful stuff."

"Do you ever do awful stuff?"

"Probably more of it than any other architect and with less excuse. The only distinction I can claim is that my botches end up in my own wastebasket."

"I warn you, we'll be away for months. If you begin to regret it and cry for your drafting table in a week, like all men who've never learned to loaf, I won't take you back. I'm the worst kind of dictator aboard my yacht. You'll have everything you can imagine, except paper or pencils. I won't even leave you any freedom of speech. No mention of girders, plastics or reinforced concrete once you step on board. I'll teach you to eat, sleep and exist like the most worthless millionaire."

"I'd like to try that."

The work in the office did not require Roark's presence for the next few months. His current jobs were being completed. Two new commissions were not to be started until spring.

He had made all the sketches Keating needed for Cortlandt. The construction was about to begin. Before sailing, on a day in late December, Roark went to take a last look at the site of Cortlandt. An anonymous spectator in a group of the idle curious, he stood and watched the steam shovels biting the earth, breaking the way for future foundations. The East River was a broad band of sluggish black water; and beyond, in a sparse haze of snowflakes, the towers of the city stood softened, half suggested in watercolors of orchid and blue.

Dominique did not protest when Wynand told her that he wanted to sail on a long cruise with Roark. "Dearest, you understand that it's not running away from you? I just need some time taken out of everything. Being with Howard is like being alone with myself, only more at peace."

"Of course, Gail. I don't mind."

But he looked at her, and suddenly he laughed, incredulously pleased. "Dominique, I believe you're jealous. It's wonderful, I'm more grateful to him than ever — if it could make you jealous of me."

She could not tell him that she was jealous or of whom.

The yacht sailed at the end of December. Roark watched, grinning, Wynand's disappointment when Wynand found that he needed to enforce no discipline. Roark did not speak of buildings, lay for hours stretched out on deck in the sun, and loafed like an expert. They spoke little. There were days when Wynand could not remember what sentences they had exchanged. It would have seemed possible to him that they had not spoken at all. Their serenity was their best means of communication.

Today they had dived together to swim and Wynand had climbed back first. As he stood at the rail, watching Roark in the water, he thought of the power he held in this moment: he could order the yacht to start moving, sail away and leave that redheaded body to sun and ocean. The thought gave him pleasure: the sense of power and the sense of surrender to Roark in the knowledge that no conceivable force could make him exercise that power. Every physical instrumentality was on his side: a few contractions of his vocal cords giving the order and someone's hand opening a valve — and the obedient machine would move away. He thought: It's not just a moral issue, not the mere horror of the act, one could conceivably abandon a man if the fate of a continent depended on it. But nothing would enable him to abandon this man. He, Gail Wynand, was the helpless one in this moment, with the solid planking of the deck under his feet. Roark, floating like a piece of driftwood, held a power greater than that of the engine in the belly of the yacht. Wynand thought: Because that is the power from which the engine has come.

Roark climbed back on deck; Wynand looked at Roark's body, at the threads of water running down the angular planes. He said:

"You made a mistake on the Stoddard Temple, Howard. That statue should have been, not of Dominique, but of you."

"No. I'm too egotistical for that."

"Egotistical? An egotist would have loved it. You use words in the strangest way."

"In the exact way. I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself."

Stretched in a deck chair, Wynand glanced up with satisfaction at the lantern, a disk of frosted glass on the bulkhead behind him: it cut off the black void of the ocean and gave him privacy within solid walls of light. He heard the sound of the yacht's motion, he felt the warm night air on his face, he saw nothing but the stretch of deck around him, enclosed and final.

Roark stood before him at the rail; a tall white figure leaning back against black space, his head lifted as Wynand had seen it lifted in an unfinished building. His hands clasped the rail. The short shirt sleeves left his arms in the light; vertical ridges of shadow stressed the tensed muscles of his arms and the tendons of his neck. Wynand thought of the yacht's engine, of skyscrapers, of transatlantic cables, of everything man had made.

"Howard, this is what I wanted. To have you here with me."

"I know."

"Do you know what it really is? Avarice. I'm a miser about two things on earth: you and Dominique. I'm a millionaire who's never owned anything. Do you remember what you said about ownership? I'm like a savage who's discovered the idea of private property and run amuck on it. It's funny. Think of Ellsworth Toohey."

"Why Ellsworth Toohey?"

"I mean, the things he preaches, I've been wondering lately whether he really understands what he's advocating. Selflessness in the absolute sense? Why, that's what I've been. Does he know that I'm the embodiment of his ideal? Of course, he wouldn't approve of my motive, but motives never alter facts. If it's true selflessness he's after, in the philosophical sense — and Mr. Toohey is a philosopher — in a sense much beyond matters of money, why, let him look at me. I've never owned anything. I've never wanted anything. I didn't give a damn — in the most cosmic way Toohey could ever hope for. I made myself into a barometer subject to the pressure of the whole world. The voice of his masses pushed me up and down. Of course, I collected a fortune in the process. Does that change the intrinsic reality of the picture? Suppose I gave away every penny of it. Suppose I had never wished to take any money at all, but had set out in pure altruism to serve the people. What would I have to do? Exactly what I've done. Give the greatest pleasure to the greatest number. Express the opinions, the desires, the tastes of the majority. The majority that voted me its approval and support freely, in the shape of a three-cent ballot dropped at the corner newsstand every morning. The Wynand papers? For thirty-one years they have represented everybody except Gail Wynand. I erased my ego out of existence in a way never achieved by any saint in a cloister. Yet people call me corrupt. Why? The saint in a cloister sacrifices only material things. It's a small price to pay for the glory of his soul. He hoards his soul and gives up the world. But I — I took automobiles, silk pyjamas, a penthouse, and gave the world my soul in exchange. Who's sacrificed more — if sacrifice is the test of virtue? Who's the actual saint?"

"Gail ... I didn't think you'd ever admit that to yourself."

"Why not? I knew what I was doing. I wanted power over a collective soul and I got it. A collective soul. It's a messy kind of concept, but if anyone wishes to visualize it concretely, let him pick up a copy of the New York Banner."

"Yes ... "

"Of course, Toohey would tell me that this is not what he means by altruism. He means I shouldn't leave it up to the people to decide what they want I should decide it. I should determine, not what I like nor what they like, but what I think they should like, and then ram it down their throats. It would have to be rammed, since their voluntary choice is the Banner. Well, there are several such altruists in the world today."

"You realize that?"

"Of course. What else can one do if one must serve the people? If one must live for others? Either pander to everybody's wishes and be called corrupt; or impose on everybody by force your own idea of everybody's good. Can you think of any other way?"

"No."

"What's left then? Where does decency start? What begins where altruism ends? Do you see what I'm in love with?"

"Yes, Gail." Wynand had noticed that Roark's voice had a reluctance that sounded almost like sadness.

"What's the matter with you? Why do you sound like that?"

"I'm sorry. Forgive me. It's just something I thought. I've been thinking of this for a long time. And particularly all these days when you've made me lie on deck and loaf."

"Thinking about me?"

"About you — among many other things."

"What have you decided?"

"I'm not an altruist, Gail. I don't decide for others."

"You don't have to worry about me. I've sold myself, but I've held no illusions about it. I've never become an Alvah Scarret. He really believes whatever the public believes. I despise the public. That's my only vindication. I've sold my life, but I got a good price. Power. I've never used it. I couldn't afford a personal desire. But now I'm free. Now I can use it for what I want. For what I believe. For Dominique. For you."

Roark turned away. When he looked back at Wynand, he said only:

"I hope so, Gail."

"What have you been thinking about these past weeks?"

"The principle behind the dean who fired me from Stanton."

"What principle?"

"The thing that is destroying the world. The thing you were talking about. Actual selflessness."

"The ideal which they say does not exist?"

"They're wrong. It does exist — though not in the way they imagine. It's what I couldn't understand about people for a long time. They have no self. They live within others. They live second-hand. Look at Peter Keating."

"You look at him. I hate his guts."

"I've looked at him — at what's left of him — and it's helped me to understand. He's paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself that he's been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness — in other people's eyes. Fame, admiration, envy — all that which comes from others. Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn't want to be great, but to be thought great. He didn't want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He borrowed from others in order to make an impression on others. There's your actual selflessness. It's his ego he's betrayed and given up. But everybody calls him selfish."

"That's the pattern most people follow."

"Yes! And isn't that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. The man whose sole aim is to make money. Now I don't see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose — to invest in his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury — he's completely moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others. They're second-handers. Look at our so-called cultural endeavors. A lecturer who spouts some borrowed rehash of nothing at all that means nothing at all to him — and the people who listen and don't give a damn, but sit there in order to tell their friends that they have attended a lecture by a famous name. All second-handers."

"If I were Ellsworth Toohey, I'd say: aren't you making out a case against selfishness? Aren't they all acting on a selfish motive — to be noticed, liked, admired?"

" — by others. At the price of their own self-respect. In the realm of greatest importance — the realm of values, of judgment, of spirit, of thought — they place others above self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn't need it."

"I think Toohey understands that. That's what helps him spread his vicious nonsense. Just weakness and cowardice. It's so easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is the strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence — such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence."

"That, precisely, is the deadliness of second-handers. They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They're concerned only with people. They don't ask: 'Is this true?' They ask: 'Is this what others think is true?' Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull. What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egotists. You don't think through another's brain and you don't work through another's hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another. Not an entity, but a relation — anchored to nothing. That's the emptiness I couldn't understand in people. That's what stopped me whenever I faced a committee. Men without an ego. Opinion without a rational process. Motion without brakes or motor. Power without responsibility. The second-hander acts, but the source of his actions is scattered in every other living person. It's everywhere and nowhere and you can't reason with him. He's not open to reason. You can't speak to him — he can't hear. You're tried by an empty bench. A blind mass running amuck, to crush you without sense or purpose. Steve Mallory couldn't define the monster, but he knew. That's the drooling beast he fears. The second-hander."

"I think your second-handers understand this, try as they might not to admit it to themselves. Notice how they'll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once. By instinct. There's a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They've got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them — because they don't exist within him and that's the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man. Look back at your own life, Howard, and at the people you've met. They know. They're afraid. You're a reproach."

"That's because some sense of dignity always remains in them. They're still human beings. But they've been taught to seek themselves in others. Yet no man can achieve the kind of absolute humility that would need no self-esteem in any form. He wouldn't survive. So after centuries of being pounded with the doctrine that altruism is the ultimate ideal, men have accepted it in the only way it could be accepted. By seeking self-esteem through others. By living second-hand. And it has opened the way for every kind of horror. It has become the dreadful form of selfishness which a truly selfish man couldn't have conceived. And now, to cure a world perishing from selflessness, we're asked to destroy the self. Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You've wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's ever held a truly personal desire, he'd find the answer. He'd see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion — prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can't say about a single thing: 'This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me.' Then he wonders why he's unhappy. Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing. But now we are taught to throw everything within us into public light and common pawing. To seek joy in meeting halls. We haven't even got a word for the quality I mean — for the self-sufficiency of man's spirit. It's difficult to call it selfishness or egotism, the words have been perverted, they've come to mean Peter Keating. Gail, I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men. I've always demanded a certain quality in the people I liked. I've always recognized it at once — and it's the only quality I respect in men. I chose my friends by that. Now I know what it is. A self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters."

"I'm glad you admit that you have friends."

"I even admit that I love them. But I couldn't love them if they were my chief reason for living. Do you notice that Peter Keating hasn't a single friend left? Do you see why? If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others."

"To hell with Peter Keating. I'm thinking of you — and your friends."

Roark smiled. "Gail, if this boat were sinking, I'd give my life to save you. Not because it's any kind of duty. Only because I like you, for reasons and standards of my own. I could die for you. But I couldn't and wouldn't live for you."

"Howard, what were the reasons and standards?" Roark looked at him and realized that he had said all the things he had tried not to say to Wynand. He answered: "That you weren't born to be a second-hander." Wynand smiled. He heard the sentence — and nothing else. Afterward, when Wynand had gone below to his cabin, Roark remained alone on deck. He stood at the rail, staring out at the ocean, at nothing.

He thought: I haven't mentioned to him the worst second-hander of all — the man who goes after power.

12.

IT WAS April when Roark and Wynand returned to the city. The skyscrapers looked pink against the blue sky, an incongruous shade of porcelain on masses of stone. There were small tufts of green on the trees in the streets.

Roark went to his office. His staff shook hands with him and he saw the strain of smiles self-consciously repressed, until a young boy burst out: "What the hell! Why can't we say how glad we are to see you back, boss?" Roark laughed. "Go ahead. I can't tell you how damn glad I am to be back." Then he sat on a table in the drafting room, while they all reported to him on the past three months, interrupting one another; he played with a ruler in his hands, not noticing it, like a man with the feel of his farm's soil under his fingers, after an absence.

In the afternoon, alone at his desk, he opened a newspaper. He had not seen a newspaper for three months. He noticed an item about the construction of Cortlandt Homes. He saw the line: "Peter Keating, architect. Gordon L. Prescott and Augustus Webb, associate designers." He sat very still.

That evening he went to see Cortlandt. The first building was almost completed. It stood alone on the large, empty tract. The workers had left for the day; a small light showed in the shack of the night watchman. The building had the skeleton of what Roark had designed, with the remnants of ten different breeds piled on the lovely symmetry of the bones. He saw the economy of plan preserved, but the expense of incomprehensible features added; the variety of modeled masses gone, replaced by the monotony of brutish cubes; a new wing added, with a vaulted roof, bulging out of a wall like a tumor, containing a gymnasium; strings of balconies added, made of metal stripes painted a violent blue; comer windows without purpose; an angle cut off for a useless door, with a round metal awning supported by a pole, like a haberdashery in the Broadway district; three vertical bands of brick, leading from nowhere to nowhere; the general style of what the profession called "Bronx Modern"; a panel of bas-relief over the main entrance, representing a mass of muscle which could be discerned as either three or four bodies, one of them with an arm raised, holding a screwdriver.

There were white crosses on the fresh panes of glass in the windows, and it looked appropriate, like an error X-ed out of existence. There was a band of red in the sky, to the west, beyond Manhattan, and the buildings of the city rose straight and black against it.

Roark stood across the space of the future road before the first house of Cortlandt. He stood straight, the muscles of his throat pulled, his wrists held down and away from his body, as he would have stood before a firing squad.

No one could tell how it had happened. There had been no deliberate intention behind it. It had just happened.

First, Toohey told Keating one morning that Gordon L. Prescott and Gus Webb would be put on the payroll as associate designers. "What do you care, Peter? It won't come out of your fee. It won't cut your prestige at all, since you're the big boss. They won't be much more than your draftsmen. All I want is to give the boys a boost. It will help their reputation, to be tagged with this project in some way. I'm very interested in building up their reputation."

"But what for? There's nothing for them to do. It's all done."

"Oh, any kind of last-minute drafting. Save time for your own staff. You can share the expense with them. Don't be a hog."

Toohey had told the truth; he had no other purpose in mind.

Keating could not discover what connections Prescott and Webb possessed, with whom, in what office, on what terms — among the dozens of officials involved in the project. The entanglement of responsibility was such that no one could be quite certain of anyone's authority. It was clear only that Prescott and Webb had friends, and that Keating could not keep them off the job.

The changes began with the gymnasium. The lady in charge of tenant selection demanded a gymnasium. She was a social worker and her task was to end with the opening of the project. She acquired a permanent job by getting herself appointed Director of Social Recreation for Cortlandt. No gymnasium had been provided in the original plans; there were two schools and a Y.M.C.A. within walking distance. She declared that this was an outrage against the children of the poor, Prescott and Webb supplied the gymnasium. Other changes followed, of a purely esthetic nature. Extras piled on the cost of construction so carefully devised for economy. The Director of Social Recreation departed for Washington to discuss the matter of a Little Theater and a Meeting Hall she wished added to the next two buildings of Cortlandt.

The changes in the drawings came gradually, a few at a time. The others okaying the changes came from headquarters. "But we're ready to start!" cried Keating. "What the hell," drawled Gus Webb, "set 'em back just a coupla thousand bucks more, that's all."

"Now as to the balconies," said Gordon L. Prescott, "they lend a certain modern style. You don't want the damn thing to look so bare. It's depressing. Besides, you don't understand psychology. The people who'll live here are used to sitting out on fire-escapes. They love it. They'll miss it. You gotta give 'em a place to sit on in the fresh air ... The cost? Hell, if you're so damn worried about the cost, I've got an idea where we can save plenty. We'll do without closet doors. What do they need doors for on closets? It's old-fashioned." All the closet doors were omitted.

Keating fought. It was the kind of battle he had never entered, but he tried everything possible to him, to the honest limit of his exhausted strength. He went from office to office, arguing, threatening, pleading. But he had no influence, while his associate designers seemed to control an underground river with interlocking tributaries. The officials shrugged and referred him to someone else. No one cared about an issue of esthetics. "What's the difference?" "It doesn't come out of your pocket, does it?" "Who are you to have it all your way? Let the boys contribute something."

He appealed to Ellsworth Toohey, but Toohey was not interested. He was busy with other matters and he had no desire to provoke a bureaucratic quarrel. In all truth, he had not prompted his protégés to their artistic endeavor, but he saw no reason for attempting to stop them. He was amused by the whole thing. "But it's awful, Ellsworth! You know it's awful!" "Oh, I suppose so. What do you care, Peter? Your poor but unwashed tenants won't be able to appreciate the finer points of architectural art. See that the plumbing works."

"But what for? What for? What for?" Keating cried to his associate designers. "Well, why shouldn't we have any say at all?" asked Gordon L. Prescott. "We want to express our individuality too."

When Keating invoked his contract, he was told: "All right, go ahead, try to sue the government. Try it." At times, he felt a desire to kill. There was no one to kill. Had he been granted the privilege, he could not have chosen a victim. Nobody was responsible. There was no purpose and no cause. It had just happened.

Keating came to Roark's house on the evening after Roark's return. He had not been summoned. Roark opened the door and said: "Good evening, Peter," but Keating could not answer. They walked silently into the work room. Roark sat down, but Keating remained standing in the middle of the floor and asked his voice dull:

"What are you going to do?"

"You must leave that up to me now."

"I couldn't help it, Howard ... I couldn't help it!"

"I suppose not."

"What can you do now? You can't sue the government."

"No."

Keating thought that he should sit down, but the distance to a chair seemed too great. He felt he would be too conspicuous if he moved.

"What are you going to do to me, Howard?"

"Nothing."

"Want me to confess the truth to them? To everybody?"

"No."

After a while Keating whispered:

"Will you let me give you the fee ... everything ... and ... "

Roark smiled.

"I'm sorry ... " Keating whispered, looking away.

He waited, and then the plea he knew he must not utter came out as:

"I'm scared, Howard ... "

Roark shook his head.

"Whatever I do, it won't be to hurt you, Peter. I'm guilty, too. We both are."

"You're guilty?"

"It's I who've destroyed you, Peter. From the beginning. By helping you. There are matters in which one must not ask for help nor give it. I shouldn't have done your projects at Stanton. I shouldn't have done the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. Nor Cortlandt. I loaded you with more than you could carry. It's like an electric current too strong for the circuit. It blows the fuse. Now we'll both pay for it. It will be hard on you, but it will be harder on me."

"You'd rather ... I went home now, Howard?"

"Yes."

At the door Keating said:

"Howard! They didn't do it on purpose."

"That's what makes it worse."

Dominique heard the sound of the car rising up the hill road. She thought it was Wynand coming home. He had worked late in the city every night of the two weeks since his return.

The motor filled the spring silence of the countryside. There was no sound in the house; only the small rustle of her hair as she leaned her head back against a chair cushion. In a moment she was not conscious of hearing the car's approach, it was so familiar at this hour, part of the loneliness and privacy outside.

She heard the car stop at the door. The door was never locked; there were no neighbors or guests to expect. She heard the door opening, and steps in the hall downstairs. The steps did not pause, but walked with familiar certainty up the stairs. A hand turned the knob of her door.

It was Roark. She thought, while she was rising to her feet, that he had never entered her room before; but he knew every part of this house; as he knew everything about her body. She felt no moment of shock, only the memory of one, a shock in the past tense, the thought: I must have been shocked when I saw him, but not now. Now, by the time she was standing before him, it seemed very simple.

She thought: The most important never has to be said between us. It has always been said like this. He did not want to see me alone. Now he's here. I waited and I'm ready.

"Good evening, Dominique."

She heard the name pronounced to fill the space of five years. She said quietly:

"Good evening, Roark."

"I want you to help me."

She was standing on the station platform of Clayton, Ohio, on the witness stand of the Stoddard trial, on the ledge of a quarry, to let herself — as she had been then — share this sentence she heard now.

"Yes, Roark."

He walked across the room he had designed for her, he sat down, facing her, the width of the room between them. She found herself seated too, not conscious of her own movements, only of his, as if his body contained two sets of nerves, his own and hers.

"Next Monday night, Dominique, exactly at eleven-thirty, I want you to drive up to the site of Cortlandt Homes."

She noticed that she was conscious of her eyelids; not painfully, but just conscious; as if they had tightened and would not move again. She had seen the first building of Cortlandt. She knew what she was about to hear.

"You must be alone in your car and you must be on your way home from some place where you had an appointment to visit, made in advance. A place that can be reached from here only by driving past Cortlandt. You must be able to prove that afterward. I want your car to run out of gas in front of Cortlandt, at eleven-thirty. Honk your horn. There's an old night watchman there. He will come out. Ask him to help you and send him to the nearest garage, which is a mile away."

She said steadily, "Yes, Roark."

"When he's gone, get out of your car. There's a big stretch of vacant land by the road, across from the building, and a kind of trench beyond. Walk to that trench as fast as you can, get to the bottom and lie down on the ground. Lie flat. After a while, you can come back to the car. You will know when to come back. See that you're found in the car and that your condition matches its condition — approximately."

"Yes, Roark."

"Have you understood?"

"Yes."

"Everything?"

"Yes. Everything."

They were standing. She saw only his eyes and that he was smiling.

She heard him say: "Good night, Dominique," he walked out and she heard his car driving away. She thought of his smile.

She knew that he did not need her help for the thing he was going to do, he could find other means to get rid of the watchman; that he had let her have a part in this, because she would not survive what was to follow if he hadn't; that this had been the test.

He had not wanted to name it; he had wanted her to understand and show no fear. She had not been able to accept the Stoddard trial, she had run from the dread of seeing him hurt by the world, but she had agreed to help him in this. Had agreed in complete serenity. She was free and he knew it.

The road ran flat across the dark stretches of Long Island, but Dominique felt as if she were driving uphill. That was the only abnormal sensation: the sensation of rising, as if her car were speeding vertically. She kept her eyes on the road, but the dashboard on the rim of her vision looked like the panel of an airplane. The clock on the dashboard said 11:10.

She was amused, thinking: I've never learned to fly a plane and now I know how it feels; just like this, the unobstructed space and no effort. And no weight. That's supposed to happen in the stratosphere — or is it the interplanetary space? — where one begins to float and there's no law of gravity. No law of any kind of gravity at all. She heard herself laughing aloud.

Just the sense of rising ... Otherwise, she felt normal. She had never driven a car so well. She thought: It's a dry, mechanical job, to drive a car, so I know I'm very clearheaded; because driving seemed easy, like breathing or swallowing, an immediate function requiring no attention. She stopped for red lights that hung in the air over crossings of anonymous streets in unknown suburbs, she turned corners, she passed other cars, and she was certain that no accident could happen to her tonight; her car was directed by remote control — one of those automatic rays she'd read about — was it a beacon or a radio beam? — and she only sat at the wheel.

It left her free to be conscious of nothing but small matters, and to feel careless and ... unserious, she thought; so completely unserious. It was a kind of clarity, being more normal than normal, as crystal is more transparent than empty air. Just small matters: the thin silk of her short, black dress and the way it was pulled over her knee, the flexing of her toes inside her pump when she moved her foot, "Danny's Diner" in gold letters on a dark window that flashed past.

She had been very gay at the dinner given by the wife of some banker, important friends of Gail's, whose names she could not quite remember now. It had been a wonderful dinner in a huge Long Island mansion. They had been so glad to see her and so sorry that Gail could not come. She had eaten everything she had seen placed before her. She had had a splendid appetite — as on rare occasions of her childhood when she came running home after a day spent in the woods and her mother was so pleased, because her mother was afraid that she might grow up to be anemic.

She had entertained the guests at the dinner table with stories of her childhood, she had made them laugh, and it had been the gayest dinner party her hosts could remember. Afterward, in the drawing room with the windows open wide to a dark sky — a moonless sky that stretched out beyond the trees, beyond the towns, all the way to the banks of the East River — she had laughed and talked, she had smiled at the people around her with a warmth that made them all speak freely of the things dearest to them, she had loved those people, and they had known they were loved, she had loved every person anywhere on earth, and some woman had said: "Dominique, I didn't know you could be so wonderful!" and she had answered: "I haven't a care in the world."

But she had really noticed nothing except the watch on her wrist and that she must be out of that house by 10:50. She had no idea of what she would say to take her leave, but by 10:45 it had been said, correctly and convincingly, and by 10:50 her foot was on the accelerator.

It was a closed roadster, black with red leather upholstery. She thought how nicely John, the chauffeur, had kept that red leather polished. There would be nothing left of the car, and it was proper that it should look its best for its last ride. Like a woman on her first night. I never dressed for my first night — I had no first night — only something ripped off me and the taste of quarry dust in my teeth.

When she saw black vertical strips with dots of light filling the glass of the car's side window, she wondered what had happened to the glass. Then she realized that she was driving along the East River and that this was New York, on the other side. She laughed and thought: No, this is not New York, this is a private picture pasted to the window of my car, all of it, here, on one small pane, under my hand, I own it, it's mine now — she ran one hand across the buildings from the Battery to Queensboro Bridge — Roark, it's mine and I'm giving it to you.

The figure of the night watchman was now fifteen inches tall in the distance. When it gets to be ten inches, I'll start, thought Dominique. She stood by the side of her car and wished the watchman would walk faster.

The building was a black mass that propped the sky in one spot. The rest of the sky sagged, intimately low over a flat stretch of ground. The closest streets and houses were years away, far on the rim of space, irregular little dents, like the teeth of a broken saw.

She felt a large pebble under the sole of her pump; it was uncomfortable, but she would not move her foot; it would make a sound. She was not alone. She knew that he was somewhere in that building, the width of a street away from her. There was no sound and no light in the building; only white crosses on black windows. He would need no light; he knew every hall, every stairwell.

The watchman had shrunk away. She jerked the door of her car open. She threw her hat and bag inside, and flung the door shut. She heard the slam of sound when she was across the road, running over the empty tract, away from the building.

She felt the silk of her dress clinging to her legs, and it served as a tangible purpose of flight, to push against that, to tear past that barrier as fast as she could. There were pits and dry stubble on the ground. She fell once, but she noticed it only when she was running again.

She saw the trench in the darkness. Then she was on her knees, at the bottom, and then stretched flat on her stomach, face down, her mouth pressed to the earth.

She felt the pounding of her thighs and she twisted her body once in a long convulsion, to feel the earth with her legs, her breasts, the skin of her arms. It was like lying in Roark's bed.

The sound was the crack of a fist on the back of her head. She felt the thrust of the earth against her, flinging her up to her feet, to the edge of the trench. The upper part of the Cortlandt building had tilted and hung still while a broken streak of sky grew slowly across it. As if the sky were slicing the building in half. Then the streak became turquoise blue light. Then there was no upper part, but only window frames and girders flying through the air, the building spreading over the sky, a long, thin tongue of red shooting from the center, another blow of a fist, and then another, a blinding flash and the glass panes of the skyscrapers across the river glittering like spangles.

She did not remember that he had ordered her to lie flat, that she was standing, that glass and twisted iron were raining around her. In the flash when walls rose outward and a building opened like a sunburst, she thought of him there, somewhere beyond, the builder who had to destroy, who knew every crucial point of that structure, who had made the delicate balance of stress and support; she thought of him selecting these key spots, placing the blast, a doctor turned murderer, expertly cracking heart, brain and lungs at once. He was there, he saw it and what it did to him was worse than what it did to the building. But he was there and he welcomed it.

She saw the city enveloped in light for half a second, she could see window ledges and cornices miles away, she thought of dark rooms and ceilings licked by this fire, she saw the peaks of towers lighted against the sky, her city now and his. "Roark!" she screamed. "Roark! Roark!" She did not know she screamed. She could not hear her voice in the blast.

Then she was running across the field to the smoking ruin, running over broken glass, planting her feet down full with each step, because she enjoyed the pain. There was no pain left ever to be felt by her again. A spread of dust stood over the field like an awning. She heard the shriek of sirens starting far away.

It was still a car, though the rear wheels were crushed under a piece of furnace machinery, and an elevator door lay over the hood. She crawled to the seat. She had to look as if she had not moved from here. She gathered handfuls of glass off the floor and poured it over her lap, over her hair. She took a sharp splinter and slashed the skin of her neck, her legs, her arms. What she felt was not pain. She saw blood shooting out of her arm, running down on her lap, soaking the black silk, trickling between her thighs. Her head fell back, mouth open, panting. She did not want to stop. She was free. She was invulnerable. She did not know she had cut an artery. She felt so light. She was laughing at the law of gravity.

When she was found by the men of the first police car to reach the scene, she was unconscious, a few minutes' worth of life left in her body.

13.

DOMINIQUE glanced about the bedroom of the penthouse. It was her first contact with surroundings she was ready to recognize. She knew she had been brought here after many days in a hospital. The bedroom seemed lacquered with light. It's that clarity of crystal over everything, she thought; that has remained; it will remain forever. She saw Wynand standing by her bed. He was watching her. He looked amused.

She remembered seeing him at the hospital. He had not looked amused then. She knew the doctor had told him she would not survive, that first night. She had wanted to tell them all that she would, that she had no choice now but to live; only it did not seem important to tell people anything, ever.

Now she was back. She could feel bandages on her throat, her legs, her left arm. But her hands lay before her on the blanket, and the gauze had been removed; there were only a few thin red scars left.

"You blasted little fool!" said Wynand happily. "Why did you have to make such a good job of it?"

Lying on the white pillow, with her smooth gold hair and a white, high-necked hospital gown, she looked younger than she had ever looked as a child. She had the quiet radiance presumed and never found in childhood: the full consciousness of certainty, of innocence, of peace.

"I ran out of gas," she said, "and I was waiting there in my car when suddenly ... "

"I've already told that story to the police. So has the night watchman. But didn't you know that glass must be handled with discretion?"

Gail looks rested, she thought, and very confident. It has changed everything for him, too; in the same way.

"It didn't hurt," she said.

"Next time you want to play the innocent bystander, let me coach you."

"They believe it though, don't they?"

"Oh yes, they believe it. They have to. You almost died. I don't see why he had to save the watchman's life and almost take yours."

"Who?"

"Howard, my dear. Howard Roark."

"What has he to do with it?"

"Darling, you're not being questioned by the police. You will be, though, and you'll have to be more convincing than that. However, I'm sure you'll succeed. They won't think of the Stoddard trial."

"Oh."

"You did it then and you'll always do it. Whatever you think of him, you'll always feel what I feel about his work."

"Gail, you're glad I did it?"

"Yes."

She saw him looking down at her hand that lay on the edge of the bed. Then he was on his knees, his lips pressed to her hand, not raising it, not touching it with his fingers, only with his mouth. That was the sole confession he would permit himself of what her days in the hospital had cost him. She lifted her other hand and moved it over his hair. She thought: It will be worse for you than if I had died, Gail, but it will be all right, it won't hurt you, there's no pain left in the world, nothing to compare with the fact that we exist: he, you and I — you've understood all that matters, though you don't know you've lost me.

He lifted his head and got up.

"I didn't intend to reproach you in any way. Forgive me."

"I won't die, Gail. I feel wonderful."

"You look it."

"Have they arrested him?"

"He's out on bail."

"You're happy?"

"I'm glad you did it and that it was for him. I'm glad he did it. He had to."

"Yes. And it will be the Stoddard trial again."

"Not quite."

"You've wanted another chance, Gail? All these years?"

"Yes."

"May I see the papers?"

"No. Not until you're up."

"Not even the Banner!"

"Particularly not the Banner."

"I love you, Gail. If you stick to the end ... "

"Don't offer me any bribes. This is not between you and me. Not even between him and me."

"But between you and God?"

"If you want to call it that. But we won't discuss it. Not until after it's over. You have a visitor waiting for you downstairs. He's been here every day."

"Who?"

"Your lover. Howard Roark. Want to let him thank you now?"

The gay mockery, the tone of uttering the most preposterous thing he could think of, told her how far he was from guessing the rest. She said:

"Yes. I want to see him. Gail, if I decide to make him my lover?"

"I'll kill you both. Now don't move, lie flat, the doctor said you must take it easy, you've got twenty-six assorted stitches all over you."

He walked out and she heard him descending the stairs.

When the first policeman had reached the scene of the explosion, he had found, behind the building, on the shore of the river, the plunger that had set off the dynamite. Roark stood by the plunger, his hands in his pockets, looking at the remnants of Cortlandt.

"What do you know about this, buddy?" the policeman asked.

"You'd better arrest me," said Roark. "I'll talk at the trial."

He had not added another word in reply to all the official questions that followed.

It was Wynand who got him released on bail, in the early hours of the morning. Wynand had been calm at the emergency hospital where he had seen Dominique's wounds and had been told she would not live. He had been calm while he telephoned, got a county judge out of bed and arranged Roark's bail. But when he stood in the warden's office of a small county jail, he began to shake suddenly. "You bloody fools!" he said through his teeth and there followed every obscenity he had learned on the waterfront. He forgot all the aspects of the situation save one: Roark being held behind bars. He was Stretch Wynand of Hell's Kitchen again and this was the kind of fury that had shattered him in sudden flashes in those days, the fury he had felt when standing behind a crumbling wall, waiting to be killed. Only now he knew that he was also Gail Wynand, the owner of an empire, and he couldn't understand why some sort of legal procedure was necessary, why he didn't smash this jail, with his fists or through his papers, it was all one to him at the moment, he wanted to kill, he had to kill, as that night behind the wall, in defense of his life.

He managed to sign papers, he managed to wait until Roark was brought out to him. They walked out together, Roark leading him by the wrist, and by the time they reached the car, Wynand was calm. In the car, Wynand asked:

"You did it, of course?"

"Of course."

"We'll fight it out together."

"If you want to make it your battle."

"At the present estimate, my personal fortune amounts to forty million dollars. That should be enough to hire any lawyer you wish or the whole profession."

"I won't use a lawyer."

"Howard! You're not going to submit photographs again?"

"No. Not this time."

Roark entered the bedroom and sat down on a chair by the bed. Dominique lay still, looking at him. They smiled at each other. Nothing has to be said, not this time either, she thought.

She asked:

"You were in jail?"

"For a few hours."

"What was it like?"

"Don't start acting about it as Gail did."

"Gail took it very badly?"

"Very."

"I won't."

"I might have to go back to a cell for years. You knew that when you agreed to help me."

"Yes. I knew that."

"I'm counting on you to save Gail, if I go."

"Counting on me?'

He looked at her and shook his head. "Dearest ... " It sounded

like a reproach.

"Yes?" she whispered.

"Don't you know by now that it was a trap I set for you?"

"How?"

"What would you do if I hadn't asked you to help me?"

"I'd be with you, in your apartment, at the Enright House, right now, publicly and openly."

"Yes. But now you can't. You're Mrs. Gail Wynand, you're above suspicion, and everyone believes you were at the scene by accident. Just let it be known what we are to each other — and it will be a confession that I did it."

"I see."

"I want you to keep quiet. If you had any thoughts of wanting to share my fate, drop them. I won't tell you what I intend to do, because that's the only way I have of controlling you until the trial. Dominique, if I'm convicted, I want you to remain with Gail. I'm counting on that, I want you to remain with him, and never tell him about us, because he and you will need each other."

"And if you're acquitted?"

"Then ... " He glanced about the room, Wynand's bedroom. "I don't want to say it here. But you know it."

"You love him very much?"

"Yes."

"Enough to sacrifice ... "

He smiled. "You've been afraid of that ever since I came here for the first time?"

"Yes."

He looked straight at her. "Did you think that possible?"

"No."

"Not my work nor you, Dominique. Not ever. But I can do this much for him: I can leave it to him if I have to go."

"You'll be acquitted."

"That's not what I want to hear you say."

"If they convict you — if they lock you in jail or put you in a chain gang — if they smear your name in every filthy headline — if they never let you design another building — if they never let me see you again — it will not matter. Not too much. Only down to a certain point."

"That's what I've waited to hear for seven years, Dominique." He took her hand, he raised it and held it to his lips, and she felt his lips where Wynand's had been. Then he got up.

"I'll wait," she said. "I'll keep quiet. I won't come near you. I promise."

He smiled and nodded. Then he left.

"It happens, upon rare occasions, that world forces too great to comprehend become focused in a single event, like rays gathered by a lens to one point of superlative brightness, for all of us to see. Such an event is the outrage of Cortlandt. Here, in a microcosm, we can observe the evil that has crushed our poor planet from the day of its birth in cosmic ooze. One man's Ego against all the concepts of mercy, humanity and brotherhood. One man destroying the future home of the disinherited. One man condemning thousands to the horror of the slums, to filth, disease and death. When an awakening society, with a new sense of humanitarian duty, made a mighty effort to rescue the underprivileged, when the best talents of society united to create a decent home for them — the egotism of one man blew the achievement of others to pieces. And for what? For some vague matter of personal vanity, for some empty conceit. I regret that the laws of our state allow nothing more than a prison sentence for this crime. That man should forfeit his life. Society needs the right to rid itself of men such as Howard Roark."

Thus spoke Ellsworth M. Toohey in the pages of the New Frontiers.

Echoes answered him from all over the country. The explosion of Cortlandt had lasted half a minute. The explosion of public fury went on and on, with a cloud of powdered plaster filling the air, with rust and refuse raining out of the cloud.

Roark had been indicted by a grand jury, had pleaded "Not guilty" and had refused to make any other statement. He had been released on a bond furnished by Gail Wynand, and he awaited trial.

There were many speculations on his motive. Some said it was professional jealousy. Others declared that there was a certain similarity between the design of Cortlandt and Roark's style of building, that Keating, Prescott and Webb might have borrowed a little from Roark — "a legitimate adaptation" — "there's no property rights on ideas" — "in a democracy, art belongs to all the people" — and that Roark had been prompted by the vengeance lust of an artist who had believed himself plagiarized.

None of it was too clear, but nobody cared too much about the motive. The issue was simple: one man against many. He had no right to a motive.

A home, built in charity, for the poor. Built upon ten thousand years in which men had been taught that charity and self-sacrifice are an absolute not to be questioned, the touchstone of virtue, the ultimate ideal. Ten thousand years of voices speaking of service and sacrifice — sacrifice is the prime rule of life — serve or be served — crush or get crushed — sacrifice is noble — make what you can of it, at the one end or the other — serve and sacrifice — serve and serve and serve ...

Against that — one man who wished neither to serve nor to rule. And had thereby committed the only unforgivable crime.

It was a sensational scandal, and there was the usual noise and the usual lust of righteous anger, such as is proper to all lynchings. But there was a fierce, personal quality in the indignation of every person who spoke about it.

"He's just an egomaniac devoid of all moral sense" —

— said the society woman dressing for a charity bazaar, who dared not contemplate what means of self-expression would be left to her and how she could impose her ostentation on her friends, if charity were not the all-excusing virtue —

— said the social worker who had found no aim in life and could generate no aim from within the sterility of his soul, but basked in virtue and held an unearned respect from all, by grace of his fingers on the wounds of others —

— said the novelist who had nothing to say if the subject of service and sacrifice were to be taken away from him, who sobbed in the hearing of attentive thousands that he loved them and loved them and would they please love him a little in return —

— said the lady columnist who had just bought a country mansion because she wrote so tenderly about the little people —

— said all the little people who wanted to hear of love, the great love, the unfastidious love, the love that embraced everything, forgave everything and permitted them everything —

— said every second-hander who could not exist except as a leech on the souls of others.

Ellsworth Toohey sat back, watched, listened and smiled.

Gordon L. Prescott and Gus Webb were entertained at dinners and cocktail parties; they were treated with tender, curious solicitude, like survivors of disaster. They said that they could not understand what possible motive Roark could have had, and they demanded justice.

Peter Keating went nowhere. He refused to see the press. He refused to see anyone. But he issued a written statement that he believed Roark was not guilty. His statement contained one curious sentence, the last. It said: "Leave him alone, please can't you leave him alone?"

Pickets from the Council of American Builders paced in front of the Cord Building. It served no purpose, because there was no work in Roark's office. The commissions he was to start had been canceled.

This was solidarity. The debutante having her toenails pedicured — the housewife buying carrots from a pushcart — the bookkeeper who had wanted to be a pianist, but had the excuse of a sister to support — the businessman who hated his business — the worker who hated his work — the intellectual who hated everybody — all were united as brothers in the luxury of common anger that cured boredom and took them out of themselves, and they knew well enough what a blessing it was to be taken out of themselves. The readers were unanimous. The press was unanimous.

Gail Wynand went against the current.

"Gail!" Alvah Scarret had gasped. "We can't defend a dynamiter!"

"Keep still, Alvah," Wynand had said, "before I bash your teeth in."

Gail Wynand stood alone in the middle of his office, his head thrown back, glad to be living, as he had stood on a wharf on a dark night facing the lights of a city.

"In the filthy howling now going on all around us," said an editorial in the Banner, signed "Gail Wynand" in big letters, "nobody seems to remember that Howard Roark surrendered himself of his own free will. If he blew up that building — did he have to remain at the scene to be arrested? But we don't wait to discover his reasons. We have convicted him without a hearing. We want him to be guilty. We are delighted with this case. What you hear is not indignation — it's gloating. Any illiterate maniac, any worthless moron who commits some revolting murder, gets shrieks of sympathy from us and marshals an army of humanitarian defenders. But a man of genius is guilty by definition. Granted that it is vicious injustice to condemn a man simply because he is weak and small. To what level of depravity has a society descended when it condemns a man simply because he is strong and great? Such, however, is the whole moral atmosphere of our century — the century of the second-rater."

"We hear it shouted," said another Wynand editorial, "that Howard Roark spends his career in and out of courtrooms. Well, that is true. A man like Roark is on trial before society all his life. Whom does that indict — Roark or society?"

"We have never made an effort to understand what is greatness in man and how to recognize it," said another Wynand editorial. "We have come to hold, in a kind of mawkish stupor, that greatness is to be gauged by self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice, we drool, is the ultimate virtue. Let's stop and think for a moment. Is sacrifice a virtue? Can a man sacrifice his integrity? His honor? His freedom? His ideal? His convictions? The honesty of his feelings? The independence of his thought? But these are a man's supreme possessions. Anything he gives up for them is not a sacrifice but an easy bargain. They, however, are above sacrificing to any cause or consideration whatsoever. Should we not, then, stop preaching dangerous and vicious nonsense? Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed. It is the unsacrificed self that we must respect in man above all."

This editorial was quoted in the New Frontiers and in many newspapers, reprinted in a box under the heading: "Look who's talking!"

Gail Wynand laughed. Resistance fed him and made him stronger. This was a war, and he had not engaged in a real war for years, not since the time when he laid the foundations of his empire amid cries of protest from the whole profession. He was granted the impossible, the dream of every man: the chance and intensity of youth, to be used with the wisdom of experience. A new beginning and a climax, together. I have waited and lived, he thought, for this.

His twenty-two newspapers, his magazines, his newsreels were given the order: Defend Roark. Sell Roark to the public. Stem the lynching.

"Whatever the facts," Wynand explained to his staff, "this is not going to be a trial by facts. It's a trial by public opinion. We've always made public opinion. Let's make it. Sell Roark. I don't care how you do it. I've trained you. You're experts at selling. Now show me how good you are."

He was greeted by silence, and his employees glanced at one another. Alvah Scarret mopped his forehead. But they obeyed.

The Banner printed a picture of the Enright House, with the caption: "Is this the man you want to destroy?" A picture of Wynand's home: "Match this, if you can." A picture of Monadnock Valley: "Is this the man who has contributed nothing to society?"

The Banner ran Roark's biography, under the byline of a writer nobody had ever heard of; it was written by Gail Wynand. The Banner ran a series on famous trials in which innocent men had been convicted by the majority prejudice of the moment. The Banner ran articles on man martyred by society: Socrates, Galileo, Pasteur, the thinkers, the scientists, a long, heroic line — each a man who stood alone, the man who defied men.

"But, Gail, for God's sake, Gail, it was a housing project!" wailed Alvah Scarret.

Wynand looked at him helplessly: "I suppose it's impossible to make you fools understand that that has nothing to do with it. All right. We'll talk about housing projects."

The Banner ran an expose on the housing racket: the graft, the incompetence, the structures erected at five times the cost a private builder would have needed, the settlements built and abandoned, the horrible performance accepted, admired, forgiven, protected by the sacred cow of altruism. "Hell is said to be paved with good intentions," said the Banner. "Could it be because we've never learned to distinguish what intentions constitute the good? Is it not time to learn? Never have there been so many good intentions so loudly proclaimed in the world. And look at it."

The Banner editorials were written by Gail Wynand as he stood at a table in the composing room, written as always on a huge piece of print stock, with a blue pencil, in letters an inch high. He slammed the G W at the end, and the famous initials had never carried such an air of reckless pride.

Dominique had recovered and returned to their country house. Wynand drove home late in the evening. He brought Roark along as often as he could. They sat together in the living room, with the windows open to the spring night. The dark stretches of the hill rolled gently down to the lake from under the walls of the house, and the lake glittered through the trees far below. They did not talk of the case or of the coming trial. But Wynand spoke of his crusade, impersonally, almost as if it did not concern Roark at all. Wynand stood in the middle of the room, saying: "All right, it was contemptible — the whole career of the Banner. But this will vindicate everything. Dominique, I know you've never been able to understand why I've felt no shame in my past. Why I love the Banner. Now you'll see the answer. Power. I hold a power I've never tested. Now you'll see the test. They'll think what I want them to think. They'll do as I say. Because it is my city and I do run things around here. Howard, by the time you come to trial, I'll have them all twisted in such a way there won't be a jury who'll dare convict you."

He could not sleep at night. He felt no desire to sleep. "Go on to bed," he would say to Roark and Dominique, "I'll come up in a few minutes." Then, Dominique from the bedroom, Roark from the guest room across the hall, would hear Wynand's steps pacing the terrace for hours, a kind of joyous restlessness in the sound, each step like a sentence anchored, a statement pounded into the floor.

Once, when Wynand dismissed them, late at night, Roark and Dominique went up the stairs together and stopped on the first landing; they heard the violent snap of a match in the living room below, a sound that carried the picture of a hand jerked recklessly, lighting the first of the cigarettes that would last till dawn, a small dot of fire crossing and recrossing the terrace to the pounding of steps.

They looked down the stairs and then looked at each other.

"It's horrible," said Dominique.

"It's great," said Roark.

"He can't help you, no matter what he does."

"I know he can't. That's not the point."

"He's risking everything he has to save you. He doesn't know he'll lose me if you're saved."

"Dominique, which will be worse for him — to lose you or to lose his crusade?" She nodded, understanding. He added: "You know that it's not me he wants to save. I'm only the excuse."

She lifted her hand. She touched his cheekbone, a faint pressure of her fingertips. She could allow herself nothing else. She turned and went on to her bedroom, and heard him closing the guestroom door.

"Is it not appropriate," wrote Lancelot Clokey in a syndicated article, "that Howard Roark is being defended by the Wynand papers? If anyone doubts the moral issues involved in this appalling case, here is the proof of what's what and who stands where. The Wynand papers — that stronghold of yellow journalism, vulgarity, corruption and muckraking, that organized insult to public taste and decency, that intellectual underworld ruled by a man who has less conception of principles than a cannibal — the Wynand papers are the proper champions of Howard Roark, and Howard Roark is their rightful hero. After a lifetime devoted to blasting the integrity of the press, it is only fit that Gail Wynand should now support a cruder fellow dynamiter."

"All this fancy talk going 'round," said Gus Webb in a public speech, "is a lot of bull. Here's the plain dope. That guy Wynand's salted away plenty, and I mean plenty, by skinning suckers in the real-estate racket all these years. Does he like it when the government muscles in and shoves him out, so's the little fellows can get a clean roof over their heads and a modern john for their kids? You bet your boots he don't like it, not one bit. It's a put-up job between the two of them, Wynand and that redheaded boy friend of his, and if you ask me the boy friend got a good hunk of cash out of Mr. Wynand for pulling the job."

"We have it from an unimpeachable source," wrote a radical newspaper, "that Cortlandt was only the first step in a gigantic plot to blow up every housing project, every public power plant, post office and schoolhouse in the U.S.A. The conspiracy is headed by Gail Wynand — as we can see — and by other bloated capitalists of his kind, including some of our biggest moneybags."

"Too little attention has been paid to the feminine angle of this case," wrote Sally Brent in the New Frontiers. "The part played by Mrs. Gail Wynand is certainly highly dubious, to say the least. Isn't it just the cutest coincidence that it was Mrs. Wynand who just so conveniently sent the watchman away at just the right time? And that her husband is now raising the roof to defend Mr. Roark? If we weren't blinded by a stupid, senseless, old-fashioned sense of gallantry where a so-called beautiful woman is concerned, we wouldn't allow that part of the case to be hushed up. If we weren't overawed by Mrs. Wynand's social position and the so-called prestige of her husband — who's making an utter fool of himself — we'd ask a few question about the story that she almost lost her life in the disaster. How do we know she did? Doctors can be bought, just like anybody else, and Mr. Gail Wynand is an expert in such matters. If we consider all this, we might well see the outlines of something that looks like a most revolting 'design for living.'"

"The position taken by the Wynand press," wrote a quiet, conservative newspaper, "is inexplicable and disgraceful."

The circulation of the Banner dropped week by week, the speed accelerating in the descent, like an elevator out of control. Stickers and buttons inscribed "We Don't Read Wynand" grew on walls, subway posts, windshields and coat lapels. Wynand newsreels were booed off the theater screens. The Banner vanished from corner newsstands; the news vendors had to carry it, but they hid it under their counters and produced it grudgingly, only upon request. The ground had been prepared, the pillars eaten through long ago; the Cortlandt case provided the final impact.

Roark was almost forgotten in the storm of indignation against Gail Wynand. The angriest protests came from Wynand's own public: from the Women's Clubs, the ministers, the mothers, the small shopkeepers. Alvah Scarret had to be kept away from the room where hampers of letters to the editor were being filled each day; he started by reading the letters — and his friends on the staff undertook to prevent a repetition of the experience, fearing a stroke.

The staff of the Banner worked in silence. There were no furtive glances, no whispered cuss words, no gossip in washrooms any longer. A few men resigned. The rest worked on, slowly, heavily, in the manner of men with life belts buckled, waiting for the inevitable.

Gail Wynand noticed a kind of lingering tempo in every action around him. When he entered the Banner Building, his employees stopped at sight of him; when he nodded to them, their greeting came a second too late; when he walked on and turned, he found them staring after him. The "Yes, Mr. Wynand," that had always answered his orders without a moment's cut between the last syllable of his voice and the first letter of the answer, now came late, and the pause had a tangible shape, so that the answer sounded like a sentence not followed but preceded by a question mark.

"One Small Voice" kept silent about the Cortlandt case. Wynand had summoned Toohey to his office, the day after the explosion, and had said: "Listen, you. Not a word in your column. Understand? What you do or yell outside is none of my business — for the time being. But if you yell too much, I'll take care of you when this is over."

"Yes, Mr. Wynand."

"As far as your column is concerned, you're deaf, dumb and blind. You've never heard of any explosion. You've never heard of anyone named Roark. You don't know what the word Cortlandt means. So long as you're in this building."

"Yes, Mr. Wynand."

"And don't let me see too much of you around here."

"Yes, Mr. Wynand."

Wynand's lawyer, an old friend who had served him for years, tried to stop him.

"Gail, what's the matter? You're acting like a child. Like a green amateur. Pull yourself together, man."

"Shut up," said Wynand.

"Gail, you are ... you were the greatest newspaperman on earth. Do I have to tell you the obvious? An unpopular cause is a dangerous business for anyone. For a popular newspaper — it's suicide."

"If you don't shut your mouth, I'll send you packing and get myself another shyster."

Wynand began to argue about the case — with the prominent men he met at business luncheons and dinners. He had never argued before on any subject; he had never pleaded. He had merely tossed final statements to respectful listeners. Now he found no listeners. He found no indifferent silence, half boredom, half resentment. The men who had gathered every word he cared to drop about the stock market, real estate, advertising, politics, had no interest in his opinion on art, greatness and abstract justice.

He heard a few answers:

"Yes, Gail, yes, sure. But on the other hand, I think it was damn selfish of the man. And that's the trouble with the world today — selfishness. Too much selfishness everywhere. That's what Lancelot Clokey said in his book — swell book, all about his childhood, you read it, saw your picture with Clokey. Clokey's been all over the world, he knows what he's talking about."

"Yes, Gail, but aren't you kind of old-fashioned about it? What's all that great man stuff? What's great about a glorified bricklayer? Who's great anyway? We're all just a lot of glands and chemicals and whatever we ate for breakfast. I think Lois Cook explained it very well in that beautiful little — what's its name? — yes, The Gallant Gallstone. Yes, sir. Your own Banner plugged like blazes for that little book."

"But look, Gail, he should've thought of other people before he thought of himself. I think if a man's got no love in his heart he can't be much good. I heard that in a play last night — that was a grand play — the new one by Ike — what the hell's his last name? — you ought to see it — your own Jules Fougler said it's a brave and tender stage poem."

"You make out a good case, Gail, and I wouldn't know what to say against it, I don't know where you're wrong, but it doesn't sound right to me, because Ellsworth Toohey — now don't misunderstand me, I don't agree with Toohey's political views at all, I know he's a radical, but on the other hand you've got to admit that he's a great idealist with a heart as big as a house — well, Ellsworth Toohey said ... "

These were the millionaires, the bankers, the industrialists, the businessmen who could not understand why the world was going to hell, as they moaned in all their luncheon speeches.

One morning when Wynand stepped out of his car in front of the Banner Building, a woman rushed up to him as he crossed the sidewalk. She had been waiting by the entrance. She was fat and middle-aged. She wore a filthy cotton dress and a crushed hat. She had a pasty, sagging face, a shapeless mouth and black, round, brilliant eyes. She stood before Gail Wynand and she flung a bunch of rotted beet leaves at his face. There were no beets, just the leaves, soft and slimy, tied with a string. They hit his cheek and rolled down to the sidewalk.

Wynand stood still. He looked at the woman. He saw the white flesh, the mouth hanging open in triumphs, the face of self-righteous evil. Passersby had seized the woman and she was screaming unspeakable obscenities. Wynand raised his hand, shook his head, gesturing for them to let the creature go, and walked into the Banner Building, a smear of greenish-yellow across his cheek.

"Ellsworth, what are we going to do?" moaned Alvah Scarret. "What are we going to do?"

Ellsworth Toohey sat perched on the edge of his desk, and smiled as if he wished he could kiss Alvah Scarret.

"Why don't they drop the damn thing, Ellsworth? Why doesn't something break to take it off the front pages? Couldn't we scare up an international situation or something? In all my born days I've never seen people go so wild over so little. A dynamiting job! Christ, Ellsworth, it's a back-page story. We get them every month, practically with every strike, remember? — the furriers' strike, the dry cleaners' strike ... oh what the hell! Why all this fury? Who cares? Why do they care?"

"There are occasions, Alvah, when the issues at stake are not the ostensible facts at all. And the public reaction seems out of all proportion, but isn't. You shouldn't be so glum about it. I'm surprised at you. You should be thanking your stars. You see, this is what I meant by waiting for the right moment. The right moment always comes. Damned if I expected it to be handed to me on a platter like that, though. Cheer up, Alvah. This is where we take over."

"Take over what?"

"The Wynand papers."

"You're crazy, Ellsworth. Like all of them. You're crazy. What do you mean? Gail holds fifty-one per cent of ... "

"Alvah, I love you. You're wonderful, Alvah. I love you, but I wish to God you weren't such a God-damn fool, so I could talk to you! I wish I could talk to somebody!"

Ellsworth Toohey tried to talk to Gus Webb, one evening, but it was disappointing. Gus Webb drawled:

"Trouble with you, Ellsworth, is you're too romantic. Too God-damn metaphysical. What's all the gloating about? There's no practical value to the thing. Nothing to get your teeth into, except for a week or two. I wish he'd blasted it when it was full of people — a few children blown to pieces — then you'd have something. Then I'd love it. The movement could use it. But this? Hell, they'll send the fool to the clink and that's that. You — a realist? You're an incurable specimen of the intelligentsia, Ellsworth, that's all you are. You think you're the man of the future? Don't kid yourself, sweetheart. I am."

Toohey sighed. "You're right, Gus," he said.

14.

"IT'S kind of you, Mr. Toohey," said Mrs. Keating humbly. "I'm glad you came. I don't know what to do with Petey. He won't see anyone. He won't go to his office. I'm scared, Mr. Toohey. Forgive me, I mustn't whine. Maybe you can help, pull him out of it. He thinks so much of you, Mr. Toohey."

"Yes, I'm sure. Where is he?"

"Right here. In his room. This way, Mr. Toohey."

The visit was unexpected. Toohey had not been here for years. Mrs. Keating felt very grateful. She led the way down the hall and opened a door without knocking, afraid to announce the visitor, afraid of her son's refusal. She said brightly:

"Look, Petey, look what a guest I have for you!"

Keating lifted his head. He sat at a littered table, bent under a squat lamp that gave a poor light; he was doing a crossword puzzle torn out of a newspaper. There was a full glass on the table with a dried red rim that had been tomato juice; a box containing a jigsaw puzzle; a deck of cards; a Bible.

"Hello, Ellsworth," he said, smiling. He leaned forward to rise, but forgot the effort, halfway.

Mrs. Keating saw the smile and stepped out hastily, relieved, closing the door.

The smile went, not quite completed. It had been an instinct of memory. Then he remembered many things which he had tried not to understand.

"Hello, Ellsworth," he repeated helplessly.

Toohey stood before him, examining the room, the table, with curiosity.

"Touching, Peter," he said. "Very touching. I'm sure he'd appreciate it if he saw it."

"Who?"

"Not very talkative these days, are you, Peter? Not very sociable?"

"I wanted to see you, Ellsworth. I wanted to talk to you." Toohey grasped a chair by the back, swung it through the air, in a broad circle like a flourish, planted it by the table and sat down.

"Well, that's what I came here for," he said. "To hear you talk."

Keating said nothing.

"Well?"

"You mustn't think I didn't want to see you, Ellsworth. It was only ... what I told Mother about not letting anyone in ... it was on account of the newspaper people. They won't leave me alone."

"My, how times change, Peter. I remember when one couldn't keep you away from newspaper people."

"Ellsworth, I haven't any sense of humor left. Not any at all."

"That's lucky. Or you'd die laughing."

"I'm so tired, Ellsworth ... I'm glad you came."

The light glanced off Toohey's glasses and Keating could not see his eyes; only two circles filled with a metallic smear, like the dead headlights of a car reflecting the approach of something from a distance.

"Think you can get away with it?" asked Toohey.

"With what?"

"The hermit act. The great penance. The loyal silence."

"Ellsworth, what's the matter with you?"

"So he's not guilty, is he? So you want us to please leave him alone, do you?"

Keating's shoulders moved, more an intention than the reality of sitting up straight, but still an intention, and his jaw moved enough to ask:

"What do you want?"

"The whole story."

"What for?"

"Want me to make it easier for you? Want a good excuse, Peter? I could, you know. I could give you thirty-three reasons, all noble, and you'd swallow any one of them. But I don't feel like making it easier for you. So I'll just tell you the truth: to send him to the penitentiary, your hero, your idol, your generous friend, your guardian angel!"

"I have nothing to tell you, Ellsworth."

"While you're being shocked out of the last of your wits you'd better hang on to enough to realize that you're no match for me. You'll talk if I want you to talk and I don't feel like wasting time. Who designed Cortlandt?"

"I did."

"Do you know that I'm an architectural expert?"

"I designed Cortlandt."

"Like the Cosmo-Slotnick Building?"

"What do you want from me?"

"I want you on the witness stand, Petey. I want you to tell the story in court. Your friend isn't as obvious as you are. I don't know what he's up to. That remaining at the scene was a bit too smart. He knew he'd be suspected and he's playing it subtle. God knows what he intends to say in court. I don't intend to let him get away with it. The motive is what they're all stuck on. I know the motive. Nobody will believe me if I try to explain it. But you'll state it under oath. You'll tell the truth. You'll tell them who designed Cortlandt and why."

"I designed it."

"If you want to say that on the stand, you'd better do something about your muscular control. What are you shaking for?"

"Leave me alone."

"Too late, Petey. Ever read Faust?"

"What do you want?"

"Howard Roark's neck."

"He's not my friend. He's never been. You know what I think of him."

"I know, you God-damn fool! I know you've worshipped him all your life. You've knelt and worshipped, while stabbing him in the back. You didn't even have the courage of your own malice. You couldn't go one way or the other. You hated me — oh, don't you suppose I knew it? — and you followed me. You loved him and you've destroyed him. Oh, you've destroyed him all right, Petey, and now there's no place to run, and you'll have to go through with it!"

"What's he to you? What difference does it make to you?"

"You should have asked that long ago. But you didn't. Which means that you knew it. You've always known it. That's what's making you shake. Why should I help you lie to yourself? I've done that for ten years. That's what you came to me for. That's what they all come to me for. But you can't get something for nothing. Ever. My socialistic theories to the contrary notwithstanding. You got what you wanted from me. It's my turn now."

"I won't talk about Howard. You can't make me talk about Howard."

"No? Why don't you throw me out of here? Why don't you take me by the throat and choke me? You're much stronger than I am. But you won't. You can't. Do you see the nature of power, Petey? Physical power? Muscle or guns or money? You and Gail Wynand should get together. You have a lot to tell him. Come on, Peter. Who designed Cortlandt?"

"Leave me alone."

"Who designed Cortlandt?"

"Let me go!"

"Who designed Cortlandt?"

"It's worse ... what you're doing ... it's much worse ... "

"Than what?"

"Than what I did to Lucius Heyer."

"What did you do to Lucius Heyer?"

"I killed him."

"What are you talking about?"

"That's why it was better. Because I let him die."

"Stop raving."

"Why do you want to kill Howard?"

"I don't want to kill him. I want him in jail. You understand? In jail. In a cell. Behind bars. Locked, stopped, strapped — and alive. He'll get up when they tell him to. He'll eat what they give him. He'll move when he's told to move and stop when he's told. He'll walk to the jute mill, when he's told, and he'll work as he's told. They'll push him, if he doesn't move fast enough, and they'll slap his face when they feel like it, and they'll beat him with rubber hose if he doesn't obey. And he'll obey. He'll take orders. He'll take orders!"

"Ellsworth!" Keating screamed. "Ellsworth!"

"You make me sick. Can't you take the truth? No, you want your sugar-coating. That's why I prefer Gus Webb. There's one who has no illusions."

Mrs. Keating threw the door open. She had heard the scream. "Get out of here!" Toohey snapped at her. She backed out, and Toohey slammed the door. Keating raised his head. "You have no right to talk to Mother that way. She had nothing to do with you."

"Who designed Cortlandt?"

Keating got up. He dragged his feet to a dresser, opened a drawer, took out a crumpled piece of paper and handed it to Toohey. It was his contract with Roark.

Toohey read it and chuckled once, a dry snap of sound. Then he looked at Keating.

"You're a complete success, Peter, as far as I'm concerned. But at times I have to want to turn away from the sight of my successes."

Keating stood by the dresser, his shoulders slumped, his eyes empty.

"I didn't expect you to have it in writing like that, with his signature. So that's what he's done for you — and this is what you do in return ... No, I take back the insults, Peter. You had to do it. Who are you to reverse the laws of history? Do you know what this paper is? The impossible perfect, the dream of the centuries, the aim of all of mankind's great schools of thought. You harnessed him. You made him work for you. You took his achievement, his reward, his money, his glory, his name. We only thought and wrote about it. You gave a practical demonstration. Every philosopher from Plato up should thank you. Here it is, the philosopher's stone — for turning gold into lead. I should be pleased, but I guess I'm human and I can't help it, I'm not pleased, I'm just sick. The others, Plato and all the rest, they really thought it would turn lead into gold. I knew the truth from the first. I've been honest with myself, Peter, and that's the hardest form of honesty. The one you all run from at any price. And right now I don't blame you, it is the hardest one, Peter."

He sat down wearily and held the paper by the corners in both hands. He said:

"If you want to know how hard it is, I'll tell you: right now I want to burn this paper. Make what you wish of that. I don't claim too great a credit, because I know that tomorrow I'll send this to the district attorney. Roark will never know it — and it would make no difference to him if he knew — but in the truth of things, there was one moment when I wanted to burn this paper."

He folded the paper cautiously and slipped it into his pocket. Keating followed his gestures, moving his whole head, like a kitten watching a ball on a string.

"You make me sick," said Toohey. "God, how you make me sick, all you hypocritical sentimentalists! You go along with me, you spout what I teach you, you profit by it — but you haven't the grace to admit to yourself what you're doing. You turn green when you see the truth. I suppose that's in the nature of your natures and that's precisely my chief weapon — but God! I get tired of it. I must allow myself a moment free of you. That's what I have to put on an act for all my life — for mean little mediocrities like you. To protect your sensibilities, your posturings, your conscience and the peace of the mind you haven't got. That's the price I pay for what I want — but at least I know that I've got to pay it. And I have no illusions about the price or the purchase."

"What do you ... want ... Ellsworth?"

"Power, Petey."

There were steps in the apartment above, someone skipping gaily, a few sounds on the ceiling as of four or five tap beats. The light fixture jingled and Keating's head moved up in obedience. Then it came back to Toohey. Toohey was smiling, almost indifferently.

"You ... always said ... " Keating began thickly, and stopped.

"I've always said just that. Clearly, precisely and openly. It's not my fault if you couldn't hear. You could, of course. You didn't want to. Which was safer than deafness — for me. I said I intended to rule. Like all my spiritual predecessors. But I'm luckier than they were. I inherited the fruit of their efforts and I shall be the one who'll see the great dream made real. I see it all around me today. I recognize it. I don't like it. I didn't expect to like it. Enjoyment is not my destiny. I shall find such satisfaction as my capacity permits. I shall rule."

"Whom ... ?"

"You. The world. It's only a matter of discovering the lever. If you learn how to rule one single man's soul, you can get the rest of mankind. It's the soul, Peter, the soul. Not whips or swords or fire or guns. That's why the Caesars, the Attilas, the Napoleons were fools and did not last. We will. The soul, Peter, is that which can't be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get your fingers on it — and the man is yours. You won't need a whip — he'll bring it to you and ask to be whipped. Set him in reverse — and his own mechanism will do your work for you. Use him against himself. Want to know how it's done? See if I ever lied to you. See if you haven't heard all this for years, but didn't want to hear, and the fault is yours, not mine. There are many ways. Here's one. Make man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and his integrity. That's difficult. The worst among you gropes for an ideal in his own twisted way. Kill integrity by internal corruption. Use it against itself. Direct it toward a goal destructive of all integrity. Preach selflessness. Tell man that he must live for others. Tell men that altruism is the ideal. Not a single one of them has ever achieved it and not a single one ever will. His every living instinct screams against it. But don't you see what you accomplish? Man realizes that he's incapable of what he's accepted as the noblest virtue — and it gives him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness. Since the supreme ideal is beyond his grasp, he gives up eventually all ideals, all aspiration, all sense of his personal value. He feels himself obliged to preach what he can't practice. But one can't be good halfway or honest approximately. To preserve one's integrity is a hard battle. Why preserve that which one knows to be corrupt already? His soul gives up its self-respect. You've got him. He'll obey. He'll be glad to obey — because he can't trust himself, he feels uncertain, he feels unclean. That's one way. Here's another. Kill man's sense of values. Kill his capacity to recognize greatness or to achieve it. Great men can't be ruled. We don't want any great men. Don't deny the conception of greatness. Destroy it from within. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional. Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept — and you stop the impetus to effort in all men, great or small. You stop all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection. Laugh at Roark and hold Peter Keating as a great architect. You've destroyed architecture. Build up Lois Cook and you've destroyed literature. Hail Ike and you've destroyed the theater. Glorify Lancelot Clokey and you've destroyed the press. Don't set out to raze all shrines — you'll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity — and the shrines are razed. Then there's another way. Kill by laughter. Laughter is an instrument of human joy. Learn to use it as a weapon of destruction. Turn it into a sneer. It's simple. Tell them to laugh at everything. Tell them that a sense of humor is an unlimited virtue. Don't let anything remain sacred in a man's soul — and his soul won't be sacred to him. Kill reverence and you've killed the hero in man. One doesn't reverence with a giggle. He'll obey and he'll set no limits to his obedience — anything goes — nothing is too serious. Here's another way. This is most important. Don't allow men to be happy. Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free men. So kill their joy in living. Take away from them whatever is dear or important to them. Never let them have what they want. Make them feel that the mere fact of a personal desire is evil. Bring them to a state where saying I want' is no longer a natural right, but a shameful admission. Altruism is of great help in this. Unhappy men will come to you. They'll need you. They'll come for consolation, for support, for escape. Nature allows no vacuum. Empty man's soul — and the space is yours to fill. I don't see why you should look so shocked, Peter. This is the oldest one of all. Look back at history. Look at any great system of ethics, from the Orient up. Didn't they all preach the sacrifice of personal joy? Under all the complications of verbiage, haven't they all had a single leitmotif: sacrifice, renunciation, self-denial? Haven't you been able to catch their theme song — 'Give up, give up, give up, give up'? Look at the moral atmosphere of today. Everything enjoyable, from cigarettes to sex to ambition to the profit motive, is considered depraved or sinful. Just prove that a thing makes men happy — and you've damned it. That's how far we've come. We've tied happiness to guilt. And we've got mankind by the throat. Throw your first-born into a sacrificial furnace — lie on a bed of nails — go into the desert to mortify the flesh — don't dance — don't go to the movies on Sunday — don't try to get rich — don't smoke — don't drink. It's all the same line. The great line. Fools think that taboos of this nature are just nonsense. Something left over, old-fashioned. But there's always a purpose in nonsense. Don't bother to examine a folly — ask yourself only what it accomplishes. Every system of ethics that preached sacrifice grew into a world power and ruled millions of men. Of course, you must dress it up. You must tell people that they'll achieve a superior kind of happiness by giving up everything that makes them happy. You don't have to be too clear about it. Use big vague words. 'Universal Harmony' — 'Eternal Spirit' — 'Divine Purpose' — 'Nirvana' — 'Paradise' — 'Racial Supremacy' — 'The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.' Internal corruption, Peter. That's the oldest one of all. The farce has been going on for centuries and men still fall for it. Yet the test should be so simple: just listen to any prophet and if you hear him speak of sacrifice — run. Run faster than from a plague. It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. But if ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that it's your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself — that will be the man who's not after your soul. That will be the man who has nothing to gain from you. But let him come and you'll scream your empty heads off, howling that he's a selfish monster. So the racket is safe for many, many centuries. But here you might have noticed something. I said, 'It stands to reason.' Do you see? Men have a weapon against you. Reason. So you must be very sure to take it away from them. Cut the props from under it. But be careful. Don't deny outright. Never deny anything outright, you give your hand away. Don't say reason is evil — though some have gone that far and with astonishing success. Just say that reason is limited. That there's something above it. What? You don't have to be too clear about it either. The field's inexhaustible. 'Instinct' — 'Feeling' — 'Revelation' — 'Divine Intuition' — 'Dialectic Materialism.' If you get caught at some crucial point and somebody tells you that your doctrine doesn't make sense — you're ready for him. You tell him that there's something above sense. That here he must not try to think, he must feel. He must believe. Suspend reason and you play it deuces wild. Anything goes in any manner you wish whenever you need it. You've got him. Can you rule a thinking man? We don't want any thinking men."

Keating had sat down on the floor, by the side of the dresser; he had felt tired and he had simply folded his legs. He did not want to abandon the dresser; he felt safer, leaning against it; as if it still guarded the letter he had surrendered.

"Peter, you've heard all this. You've seen me practicing it for ten years. You see it being practiced all over the world. Why are you disgusted? You have no right to sit there and stare at me with the virtuous superiority of being shocked. You're in on it. You've taken your share and you've got to go along. You're afraid to see where it's leading. I'm not I'll tell you. The world of the future. The world I want. A world of obedience and of unity. A world where the thought of each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thought of the brain of his neighbor who'll have no thought of his own but an attempt to guess the thought of the next neighbor who'll have no thought — and so on, Peter, around the globe. Since all must agree with all. A world where no man will hold a desire for himself, but will direct all his efforts to satisfy the desires of his neighbor who'll have no desires except to satisfy the desires of the next neighbor who'll have no desires — around the globe, Peter. Since all must serve all. A world in which man will not work for so innocent an incentive as money, but for that headless monster — prestige. The approval of his fellows — their good opinion — the opinion of men who'll be allowed to hold no opinion. An octopus, all tentacles and no brain. Judgment, Peter! Not judgment, but public polls. An average drawn upon zeroes — since no individuality will be permitted. A world with its motor cut off and a single heart, pumped by hand. My hand — and the hands of a few, a very few other men like me. Those who know what makes you tick — you great, wonderful average, you who have not risen in fury when we called you the average, the little, the common, you who've liked and accepted those names. You'll sit enthroned and enshrined, you, the little people, the absolute ruler to make all past rulers squirm with envy, the absolute, the unlimited, God and Prophet and King combined. Vox populi. The average, the common, the general. Do you know the proper antonym for Ego? Bromide, Peter. The rule of the bromide. But even the trite has to be originated by someone at some time. We'll do the originating. Vox dei. We'll enjoy unlimited submission — from men who've learned nothing except to submit. We'll call it 'to serve.' We'll give out medals for service. You'll fall over one another in a scramble to see who can submit better and more. There will be no other distinction to seek. No other form of personal achievement. Can you see Howard Roark in the picture? No? Then don't waste time on foolish questions. Everything that can't be ruled, must go. And if freaks persist in being born occasionally, they will not survive beyond their twelfth year. When their brain begins to function, it will feel the pressure and it will explode. The pressure gauged to a vacuum. Do you know the fate of deep-sea creatures brought out to sunlight? So much for future Roarks. The rest of you will smile and obey. Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought. But we'll have neither God nor thought. Only voting by smiles. Automatic levers — all saying yes ... Now if you were a little more intelligent — like your ex-wife, for instance — you'd ask: What of us, the rulers? What of me, Ellsworth Monkton Toohey? And I'd say, Yes, you're right. I'll achieve no more than you will. I'll have no purpose save to keep you contented. To lie, to flatter you, to praise you, to inflate your vanity. To make speeches about the people and the common good. Peter, my poor old friend, I'm the most selfless man you've every known. I have less independence than you, whom I just forced to sell your soul. You've used people at least for the sake of what you could get from them for yourself. I want nothing for myself. I use people for the sake of what I can do to them. It's my only function and satisfaction. I have no private purpose. I want power. I want my world of the future. Let all live for all. Let all sacrifice and none profit. Let all suffer and none enjoy. Let progress stop. Let all stagnate. There's equality in stagnation. All subjugated to the will of all. Universal slavery — without even the dignity of a master. Slavery to slavery. A great circle — and a total equality. The world of the future."

"Ellsworth ... you're ... "

"Insane? Afraid to say it? There you sit and the world's written all over you, your last hope. Insane? Look around you. Pick up any newspaper and read the headlines. Isn't it coming? Isn't it here? Every single thing I told you? Isn't Europe swallowed already and we're stumbling on to follow? Everything I said is contained in a single word — collectivism. And isn't that the god of our century? To act together. To think — together. To feel — together. To unite, to agree, to obey. To obey, to serve, to sacrifice. Divide and conquer — first. But then — unite and rule. We've discovered that one at last. Remember the Roman Emperor who said he wished humanity had a single neck so he could cut it? People have laughed at him for centuries. But we'll have the last laugh. We've accomplished what he couldn't accomplish. We've taught men to unite. This makes one neck ready for one leash. We found the magic word. Collectivism. Look at Europe, you fool. Can't you see past the guff and recognize the essence? One country is dedicated to the proposition that man has no rights, that the collective is all. The individual held as evil, the mass — as God, No motive and no virtue permitted — except that of service to the proletariat. That's one version. Here's another. A country dedicated to the proposition that man has no rights, that the State is all. The individual held as evil, the race — as God. No motive and no virtue permitted — except that of service to the race. Am I raving or is this the cold reality of two continents already? Watch the pincer movement. If you're sick of one version, we push you into the other. We get you coming and going. We've closed the doors. We've fixed the coin. Heads — collectivism, and tails — collectivism. Fight the doctrine which slaughters the individual with a doctrine which slaughters the individual. Give up your soul to a council — or give it up to a leader. But give it up, give it up, give it up. My technique, Peter. Offer poison as food and poison as antidote. Go fancy on the trimmings, but hang on to the main objective. Give the fools a choice, let them have their fun — but don't forget the only purpose you have to accomplish. Kill the individual. Kill man's soul. The rest will follow automatically. Observe the state of the world as of the present moment. Do you still think I'm crazy, Peter?"

Keating sat on the floor, his legs spread out. He lifted one hand and studied his fingertips, then put it to his mouth and bit off a hangnail. But the movement was deceptive; the man was reduced to a single sense, the sense of hearing, and Toohey knew that no answer could be expected.

Keating waited obediently; it seemed to make no difference; the sounds had stopped and it was now his function to wait until they started again.

Toohey put his hands on the arms of his chair, then lifted his palms, from the wrists, and clasped the wood again, a little slap of resigned finality. He pushed himself up to his feet.

"Thank you, Peter," he said gravely. "Honesty is a hard thing to eradicate. I have made speeches to large audiences all my life. This was the speech I'll never have a chance to make."

Keating lifted his head. His voice had the quality of a down payment on terror; it was not frightened, but it held the advance echoes of the next hour to come:

"Don't go, Ellsworth."

Toohey stood over him, and laughed softly.

"That's the answer, Peter. That's my proof. You know me for what I am, you know what I've done to you, you have no illusions of virtue left. But you can't leave me and you'll never be able to leave me. You've obeyed me in the name of ideals. You'll go on obeying me without ideals. Because that's all you're good for now ... Good night, Peter."

15.

"THIS is a test case. What we think of it will determine what we are. In the person of Howard Roark, we must crush the forces of selfishness and antisocial individualism — the curse of our modern world — here shown to us in ultimate consequences. As mentioned at the beginning of this column, the district attorney now has in his possession a piece of evidence — we cannot disclose its nature at this moment — which proves conclusively that Roark is guilty. We, the people, shall now demand justice."

This appeared in "One Small Voice" on a morning late in May. Gail Wynand read it in his car, driving home from the airport. He had flown to Chicago in a last attempt to hold a national advertiser who had refused to renew a three-million-dollar contract. Two days of skillful effort had failed; Wynand lost the advertiser. Stepping off the plane in Newark, he picked up the New York papers. His car was waiting to take him to his country house. Then he read "One Small Voice."

He wondered for a moment what paper he held. He looked at the name on the top of the page. But it was the Banner, and the column was there, in its proper place, column one, first page, second section.

He leaned forward and told the chauffeur to drive to his office. He sat with the page spread open on his lap, until the car stopped before the Banner Building.

He noticed it at once, when he entered the building. In the eyes of two reporters who emerged from an elevator in the lobby; in the pose of the elevator man who fought a desire to turn and stare back at him; in the sudden immobility of all the men in his anteroom, in the break of a typewriter's clicking on the desk of one secretary, in the lifted hand of another — he saw the waiting. Then he knew that all the implications of the unbelievable were understood by everyone on his paper.

He felt a first dim shock; because the waiting around him contained wonder in anyone's mind about the outcome of an issue between him and Ellsworth Toohey.

But he had no time to take notice of his own reactions. He had no attention to spare for anything except a sense of tightness, a pressure against the bones of his face, his teeth, his cheeks, the bridge of his nose — and he knew he must press back against that, keep it down, hold it.

He greeted no one and walked into his office. Alvah Scarret sat slumped in a chair before his desk. Scarret had a bandage of soiled white gauze on his throat, and his cheeks were flushed. Wynand stopped in the middle of the room. The people outside had felt relieved: Wynand's face looked calm. Alvah Scarret knew better.

"Gail, I wasn't here," he gulped in a cracked whisper that was not a voice at all. "I haven't been here for two days. Laryngitis, Gail. Ask my doctor. I wasn't here. I just got out of bed, look at me, I've got a hundred and three, fever, I mean, the doctor didn't want me to, but I ... to get up, I mean, Gail, I wasn't here, I wasn't here!"

He could not be certain that Wynand heard. But Wynand let him finish, then assumed the appearance of listening, as if the sounds were reaching him, delayed. After a moment, Wynand asked:

"Who was on the copy desk?"

"It ... it went through Alien and Falk."

"Fire Harding, Allen, Falk and Toohey. Buy off Harding's contract. But not Toohey's. Have them all out of the building in fifteen minutes."

Harding was the managing editor; Falk, a copy reader; Alien, the slot man, head of the copy desk; all had worked on the Banner for more than ten years. It was as if Scarret had heard a news flash announcing the impeachment of a President, the destruction of New York City by a meteor and the sinking of California into the Pacific Ocean.

"Gail!" he screamed. "We can't!"

"Get out of here."

Scarret got out.

Wynand pressed a switch on his desk and said in answer to the trembling voice of the woman outside:

"Don't admit anyone."

"Yes, Mr. Wynand."

He pressed a button and spoke to the circulation manager:

"Stop every copy on the street."

"Mr. Wynand, it's too late! Most of them are ... "

"Stop them."

"Yes, Mr. Wynand."

He wanted to put his head down on the desk, lie still and rest, only the form of rest he needed did not exist, greater than sleep, greater than death, the rest of having never lived. The wish was like a secret taunt against himself, because he knew that the splitting pressure in his skull meant the opposite, an urge to action, so strong that he felt paralyzed. He fumbled for some sheets of clean paper, forgetting where he kept them. He had to write the editorial that would explain and counteract. He had to hurry. He felt no right to any minute that passed with the thing unwritten.

The pressure disappeared with the first word he put on paper. He thought — while his hand moved rapidly — what a power there was in words; later, for those who heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier. He thought, perhaps the basic secret the scientists have never discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens when a thought takes shape in words.

He heard the rumble, the vibration in the walls of his office, in the floor. The presses were running off his afternoon paper, a small tabloid, the Clarion. He smiled at the sound. His hand went faster, as if the sound were energy pumped into his fingers.

He had dropped his usual editorial "we." He wrote: " ... And if my readers or my enemies wish to laugh at me over this incident, I shall accept it and consider it the payment of a debt incurred. I have deserved it."

He thought: It's the heart of this building, beating — what time is it? — do I really hear it or is it my own heart? — once, a doctor put the ends of his stethoscope into my ears and let me hear my own heartbeats — it sounded just like this — he said I was a healthy animal and good for many years — for many ... years ...

"I have foisted upon my readers a contemptible blackguard whose spiritual stature is my only excuse. I had not reached a degree of contempt for society such as would have permitted me to consider him dangerous. I am still holding on to a respect for my fellow men sufficient to let me say that Ellsworth Toohey cannot be a menace."

They say sound never dies, but travels on in space — what happens to a man's heartbeats? — so many of them in fifty-six years — could they be gathered again, in some sort of condenser, and put to use once more? If they were re-broadcast, would the result be the beating of those presses?

"But I have sponsored him under the masthead of my paper, and if public penance is a strange, humiliating act to perform in our modern age, such is the punishment I impose upon myself hereby."

Not fifty-six years of those soft little drops of sound a man never hears, each single and final, not like a comma, but like a period, a long string of periods on a page, gathered to feed those presses — not fifty-six, but thirty-one, the other twenty-five went to make me ready — I was twenty-five when I raised the new masthead over the door — Publishers don't change the name of a paper — This one does — The New York Banner — Gail Wynand's Banner ...

"I ask the forgiveness of every man who has ever read this paper."

A healthy animal — and that which comes from me is healthy — I must bring that doctor here and have him listen to those presses — he'll grin in his good, smug, satisfied way, doctors like a specimen of perfect health occasionally, it's rare enough — I must give him a treat — the healthiest sound he ever heard — and he'll say the Banner is good for many years ...

The door of his office opened and Ellsworth Toohey came in.

Wynand let him cross the room and approach the desk, without a gesture of protest. Wynand thought that what he felt was curiosity — if curiosity could be blown into the dimensions of a thing from the abyss — like those drawings of beetles the size of a house advancing upon human figures in the pages of the Banner's Sunday supplement — curiosity, because Ellsworth Toohey was still in the building, because Toohey had gained admittance past the orders given, and because Toohey was laughing.

"I came to take my leave of absence, Mr. Wynand," said Toohey. His face was composed; it expressed no gloating; the face of an artist who knew that overdoing was defeat and achieved the supreme of offensiveness by remaining normal. "And to tell you that I'll be back. On this job, on this column, in this building. In the interval you will have seen the nature of the mistake you've made. Do forgive me, I know this is in utterly bad taste, but I've waited for it for thirteen years and I think I can permit myself five minutes as a reward. So you were a possessive man, Mr. Wynand, and you loved your sense of property? Did you ever stop to think what it rested upon? Did you stop to secure the foundations? No, because you were a practical man. Practical men deal in bank accounts, real estate, advertising contracts and gilt-edged securities. They leave to the impractical intellectuals, like me, the amusements of putting the gilt edges through a chemical analysis to learn a few things about the nature and the source of gold. They hang on to Kream-O Pudding, and leave us such trivia as the theater, the movies, the radio, the schools, the book reviews and the criticism of architecture. Just a sop to keep us quiet if we care to waste our time playing with the inconsequentials of life, while you're making money. Money is power. Is it, Mr. Wynand? So you were after power, Mr. Wynand? Power over men? You poor amateur! You never discovered the nature of your own ambition or you'd have known that you weren't fit for it. You couldn't use the methods required and you wouldn't want the results. You've never been enough of a scoundrel. I don't mind handing you that, because I don't know which is worse: to be a great scoundrel or a gigantic fool. That's why I'll be back. And when I am, I'll run this paper."

Wynand said quietly:

"When you are. Now get out of here."

The city room of the Banner walked out on strike.

The Union of Wynand Employees walked out in a body. A great many others, non-members, joined them. The typographical staff remained.

Wynand had never given a thought to the Union. He paid higher wages than any other publisher and no economic demands had ever been made upon him. If his employees wished to amuse themselves by listening to speeches, he saw no reason to worry about it. Dominique had tried to warn him once: "Gail, if people want to organize for wages, hours or practical demands, it's their proper right. But when there's no tangible purpose, you'd better watch closely."

"Darling, how many times do I have to ask you? Keep off the Banner."

He had never taken the trouble to learn who belonged to the Union. He found now that the membership was small — and crucial; it included all his key men, not the big executives, but the rank below, expertly chosen, the active ones, the small, indispensable spark plugs: the best leg men, the general assignment men, the rewrite men, the assistant editors. He looked up their records: most of them had been hired in the last eight years; recommended by Mr. Toohey.

Non-members walked out for various reasons: some, because they hated Wynand; others, because they were afraid to remain and it seemed easier than to analyze the issue. One man, a timid little fellow, met Wynand in the hall and stopped to shriek: "We'll be back, sweetheart, and then it'll be a different tune!" Some left, avoiding the sight of Wynand. Others played safe. "Mr. Wynand, I hate to do it, I hate it like hell, I had nothing to do with that Union, but a strike's a strike and I can't permit myself to be a scab." "Honest, Mr. Wynand, I don't know who's right or wrong, I do think Ellsworth pulled a dirty trick and Harding had no business letting him get away with it, but how can one be sure who's right about anything nowadays? And one thing I won't do is I won't picket line. No, sir. The way I feel is, pickets right or wrong."

The strikers presented two demands: the reinstatement of the four men who had been discharged; a reversal of the Banner's stand on the Cortlandt case.

Harding, the managing editor, wrote an article explaining his position; it was published in the New Frontiers. "I did ignore Mr. Wynand's orders in a matter of policy, perhaps an unprecedented action for a managing editor to take. I did so with full realization of the responsibility involved. Mr. Toohey, Alien, Falk and I wished to save the Banner for the sake of its employees, its stockholders and its readers. We wished to bring Mr. Wynand to reason by peaceful means. We hoped he would give in with good grace, once he had seen the Banner committed to the stand shared by most of the press of the country. We knew the arbitrary, unpredictable and unscrupulous character of our employer, but we took the chance, willing to sacrifice ourselves to our professional duty. While we recognize an owner's right to dictate the policy of his paper on political, sociological or economic issues, we believe that a situation has gone past the limits of decency when an employer expects self-respecting men to espouse the cause of a common criminal. We wish Mr. Wynand to realize that the day of dictatorial one-man rule is past. We must have some say in the running of the place where, we make our living. It is a fight for the freedom of the press.

Mr. Harding was sixty years old, owned an estate on Long Island, and divided his spare time between skeet-shooting and breeding pheasants. His childless wife was a member of the Board of Directors of the Workshop for Social Study; Toohey, its star lecturer, had introduced her to the Workshop. She had written her husband's article.

The two men off the copy desk were not members of Toohey's Union. Alien's daughter was a beautiful young actress who starred in all of Ike's plays. Falk's brother was secretary to Lancelot Clokey.

Gail Wynand sat at the desk in his office and looked down at a pile of paper. He had many things to do, but one picture kept coming back to him and he could not get rid of it and the sense of it clung to all his actions — the picture of a ragged boy standing before the desk of an editor: "Can you spell cat?" — "Can you spell anthropomorphology?" The identities cracked and became mixed, it seemed to him that the boy stood here, at his desk, waiting, and once he said aloud: "Go away!" He caught himself in anger, he thought: You're cracking, you fool, now's not the time. He did not speak aloud again, but the conversation went on silently while he read, checked and signed papers: "Go away! We have no jobs here." I'll hang around. Use me when you want to. You don't have to pay me."

"They're paying you, don't you understand, you little fool? They're paying you." Aloud, his voice normal, he said into a telephone: 'Tell Manning that we'll have to fill in with mat stuff ... Send up the proofs as soon as you can ... Send up a sandwich. Any kind."

A few had remained With him: the old men and the copy boys. They came in, in the morning, often with cuts on their faces and blood on their collars; one stumbled in, his skull open, and had to be sent away in an ambulance. It was neither courage nor loyalty; it was inertia; they had lived too long with the thought that the world would end if they lost their jobs on the Banner. The old ones did not understand. The young ones did not care.

Copy boys were sent out on reporter's beats. Most of the stuff they sent in was of such quality that Wynand was forced past despair into howls of laughter: he had never read such highbrow English; he could see the pride of the ambitious youth who was a journalist at last. He did not laugh when the stories appeared in the Banner as written; there were not enough rewrite men.

He tried to hire new men. He offered extravagant salaries. The people he wanted refused to work for him. A few men answered his call, and he wished they hadn't, though he hired them. They were men who had not been employed by a reputable newspaper for ten years; the kind who would not have been allowed, a month ago, into the lobby of his building. Some of them had to be thrown out in two days; others remained. They were drunk most of the time. Some acted as if they were granting Wynand a favor. "Don't you get huffy, Gail, old boy," said one — and was tossed bodily down two flights of stairs. He broke an ankle and sat on the bottom landing, looking up at Wynand with an air of complete astonishment. Others were subtler; they merely stalked about and looked at Wynand slyly, almost winking, implying that they were fellow criminals tied together in a dirty deal.

He appealed to schools of journalism. No one responded. One student body sent him a resolution signed by all its members: " ... Entering our careers with a high regard for the dignity of our profession, dedicating ourselves to uphold the honor of the press, we feel that none among us could preserve his self-respect and accept an offer such as yours."

The news editor had remained at his desk; the city editor had gone. Wynand filled in as city editor, managing editor, wire man, rewrite man, copy boy. He did not leave the building. He slept on a couch in his office — as he had done in the first years of the Banner's existence. Goalless, tieless, his shirt collar torn open, he ran up and down the stairs, his steps like the rattle of a machine gun. Two elevator boys had remained; the others had vanished, no one knew just when or why, whether prompted by sympathy for the strike, fear or plain discouragement.

Alvah Scarret could not understand Wynand's calm. The brilliant machine — and that, thought Scarret, was really the word which had always stood for Wynand in his mind — had never functioned better. His words were brief, his orders rapid, his decisions immediate. In the confusion of machines, lead, grease, ink, waste paper, unswept offices, untenanted desks, glass crashing in sudden showers when a brick was hurled from the street below, Wynand moved like a figure in double-exposure, superimposed on his background, out of place and scale. He doesn't belong here, thought Scarret, because he doesn't look modern — that's what it is — he doesn't look modern, no matter what kind of pants he's wearing — he looks like something out of a Gothic cathedral. The patrician head, held level, the fleshless face that had shrunk tighter together. The captain of a ship known by all, save the captain, to be sinking.

Alvah Scarret had remained. He had not grasped that the events were real; he shuffled about in a stupor; he felt a fresh jolt of bewilderment each morning when he drove up to the building and saw the pickets. He suffered no injury beyond a few tomatoes hurled at his windshield. He tried to help Wynand; he tried to do his work and that of five other men, but he could not complete a normal day's task. He was going quietly to pieces, his joints wrenched loose by a question mark. He wasted everybody's time, interrupting anything to ask: "But why? Why? How, just like that all of a sudden?"

He saw a nurse in white uniform walking down the hall — an emergency first-aid station had been established on the ground floor. He saw her carrying a wastebasket to the incinerator, with wadded clumps of gauze, bloodstained. He turned away; he felt sick. It was not the sight, but the greater terror of an implication grasped by his instinct: this civilized building — secure in the neatness of waxed floors, respectable with the strict grooming of modern business, a place where one dealt in such rational matters as written words and trade contracts, where one accepted ads for baby garments and chatted about golf — had become, in the span of a few days, a place where one carried bloody refuse through the halls. Why? — thought Alvah Scarret.

"I can't understand it," he droned in an accentless monotone to anyone around him, "I can't understand how Ellsworth got so much power ... And Ellsworth's a man of culture, an idealist, not a dirty radical off a soapbox, he's so friendly and witty, and what an erudition! — a man who jokes all the time is not a man of violence — Ellsworth didn't mean this, he didn't know what it would lead to, he loves people, I'd stake my shirt on Ellsworth Toohey."

Once, in Wynand's office, he ventured to say:

"Gail, why don't you negotiate? Why don't you meet with them at least?"

"Shut up."

"But, Gail, there might be a bit of truth on their side, too. They're newspapermen. You know what they say, the freedom of the press ... "

Then he saw the fit of fury he had expected for days and had thought safely sidetracked — the blue irises vanishing in a white smear, the blind, luminous eyeballs in a face that was all cavities, the trembling hands. But in a moment, he saw what he had never witnessed before: he saw Wynand break the fit, without sound, without relief. He saw the sweat of the effort on the hollow temples, and the fists on the edge of the desk.

"Alvah ... if I had not sat on the stairs of the Gazette for a week ... where would be the press for them to be free on?"

There were policemen outside, and in the halls of the building. It helped, but not much. One night acid was thrown at the main entrance. It burned the big plate glass of the ground floor windows and left leprous spots on the walls. Sand in the bearings stopped one of the presses. An obscure delicatessen owner got his shop smashed for advertising in the Banner. A great many small advertisers withdrew. Wynand delivery trucks were wrecked. One driver was killed. The striking Union of Wynand Employees issued a protest against acts of violence; the Union had not instigated them; most of its members did not know who had. The New Frontiers said something about regrettable excesses, but ascribed them to "spontaneous outbursts of justifiable popular anger."

Homer Slottern, in the name of a group who called themselves the liberal businessmen, sent Wynand a notice canceling their advertising contracts. "You may sue us if you wish. We feel we have a legitimate cause for cancellation. We signed to advertise in a reputable newspaper, not in a sheet that has become a public disgrace, brings pickets to our doors, ruins our business and is not being read by anybody." The group included most of the Banner's wealthiest advertisers.

Gail Wynand stood at the window of his office and looked at his city.

"I have supported strikes at a time when it was dangerous to do so. I have fought Gail Wynand all my life. I had never expected to see the day or the issue when I would be forced to say — as I say now — that I stand on the side of Gail Wynand," wrote Austen Heller in the Chronicle.

Wynand sent him a note: "God damn you, I didn't ask you to defend me. G W

The New Frontiers described Austen Heller as "A reactionary who has sold himself to Big Business." Intellectual society ladies said that Austin Heller was old-fashioned.

Gail Wynand stood at a desk in the city room and wrote editorials as usual. His derelict staff saw no change in him; no haste, no outbursts of anger. There was nobody to notice that some of his actions were new: he would go to the pressroom and stand looking at the white stream shot out of the roaring giants, and listen to the sound. He would pick up a lead slug off the composing room floor, and finger it absently on the palm of his hand, like a piece of jade, and lay it carefully on a table, as if he did not want it to be wasted. He fought other forms of such waste, not noticing it, the gestures instinctive: he retrieved pencils, he spent a half-hour, while telephones shrieked unanswered, repairing a typewriter that had broken down. It was not a matter of economy; he signed checks without looking at the figures; Scarret was afraid to think of the amounts each passing day cost him. It was a matter of things that were part of the building where he loved every doorknob, things that belonged to the Banner that belonged to him.

Late each afternoon he telephoned Dominique in the country. "Fine. Everything under control. Don't listen to panic-mongers ... No, to hell with it, you know I don't want to talk about the damn paper. Tell me what the garden looks like ... Did you go swimming today? ... Tell me about the lake ... What dress are you wearing? ... Listen to WLX tonight, at eight, they'll have your pet — Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto ... Of course I have time to keep informed about everything ... Oh, all right, I see one can't fool an ex-newspaper woman, I did go over the radio page ... Of course we have plenty of help, it's just that I can't quite trust some of the new boys and I had a moment to spare ... Above all, don't come to town. You promised me that ... Good night, dearest ... "

He hung up and sat looking at the telephone, smiling. The thought of the countryside was like the thought of a continent beyond an ocean that could not be crossed; it gave him a sense of being locked in a besieged fortress and he liked that — not the fact, but the feeling. His face looked like a throwback to some distant ancestor who had fought on the ramparts of a castle.

One evening he went out to the restaurant across the street; he had not eaten a complete meal for days. The streets were still light when he came back — the placid brown haze of summer, as if dulled sunrays remained stretched too comfortably on the warm air to undertake a movement of withdrawal, even though the sun had long since gone; it made the sky look fresh and the street dirty; there were patches of brown and tired orange in the corners of old buildings. He saw pickets pacing in front of the Banner's entrance. There were eight of them and they marched around and around in a long oval on the sidewalk. He recognized one boy — a police reporter, he had never seen any of the others. They carried signs: "Toohey, Harding, Alien, Falk ... " "The Freedom of the Press ... " "Gail Wynand Tramples Human Rights ... "

His eyes kept following one woman. Her hips began at her ankles, bulging over the tight straps of her shoes; she had square shoulders and a long coat of cheap brown tweed over a huge square body. She had small white hands, the kind that would drop things all over the kitchen. She had an incision of a mouth, without lips, and she waddled as she moved, but she moved with surprising briskness. Her steps defied the whole world to hurt her, with a malicious slyness that seemed to say she would like nothing better, because what a joke it would be on the world if it tried to hurt her, just try it and see, just try it. Wynand knew she had never been employed on the Banner; she never could be; it did not appear likely that she could be taught to read; her steps seemed to add that she jolly well didn't have to. She carried a sign: "We demand ... "

He thought of the nights when he had slept on the couch in the old Banner Building, in the first years, because the new presses had to be paid for and the Banner had to be on the streets before its competitors, and he coughed blood one night and refused to see a doctor, but it turned out to be nothing, just exhaustion.

He hurried into the building. The presses were rolling. He stood and listened for a while.

At night the building was quiet. It seemed bigger, as if sound took space and vacated it; there were panels of light at open doors, between long stretches of dim hallways. A lone typewriter clicked somewhere, evenly, like a dripping faucet. Wynand walked through the halls. He thought that men had been willing to work for him when he plugged known crooks for municipal elections, when he glamorized red-light districts, when he ruined reputations by scandalous libel, when he sobbed over the mothers of gangsters. Talented men, respected men had been eager to work for him. Now he was being honest for the first time in his career. He was leading his greatest crusade — with the help of finks, drifters, drunkards, and humble drudges too passive to quit. The guilt, he thought, was not perhaps with those who now refused to work for him.

The sun hit the square crystal inkstand on his desk. It made Wynand think of a cool drink on a lawn, white clothes, the feel of grass under bare elbows. He tried not to look at the gay glitter and went on writing. It was a morning in the second week of the strike. He had retreated to his office for an hour and given orders not to be disturbed; he had an article to finish; he knew he wanted the excuse, one hour of not seeing what went on in the building.

The door of his office opened without announcement, and Dominique came in. She had not been allowed to enter the Banner Building since their marriage.

He got up, a kind of quiet obedience in his movement, permitting himself no questions. She wore a coral linen suit, she stood as if the lake were behind her and the sunlight rose from the surface to the folds of her clothes. She said:

"Gail, I've come for my old job on the Banner."

He stood looking at her silently; then he smiled; it was a smile of convalescence.

He turned to the desk, picked up the sheets he had written, handed them to her and said:

"Take this to the back room. Pick up the wire flimsies and bring them to me. Then report to Manning at the city desk."

The impossible, the not to be achieved in word, glance or gesture, the complete union of two beings in complete understanding, was done by a small stack of paper passing from his hand to hers. Their fingers did not touch. She turned and walked out of the office.

Within two days, it was as if she had never left the staff of the Banner. Only now she did not write a column on houses, but kept busy wherever a competent hand was needed to fill a gap. "It's quite all right, Alvah," she said to Scarret, "it's a proper feminine job to be a seamstress. I'm here to slap on patches where necessary — and boy! is this cloth ripping fast! Just call me when one of your new journalists runs amuck more than usual."

Scarret could not understand her tone, her manner or her presence. "You're a lifesaver, Dominique," he mumbled sadly. "It's like the old days, seeing you here — and oh! how I wish it were the old days! Only I can't understand. Gail wouldn't allow a photo of you in the place, when it was a decent, respectable place — and now when it's practically as safe as a penitentiary during a convict riot, he lets you work here!"

"Can the commentaries, Alvah. We haven't the time."

She wrote a brilliant review of a movie she hadn't seen. She dashed off a report on a convention she hadn't attended. She batted out a string of recipes for the "Daily Dishes" column, when the lady in charge failed to show up one morning. "I didn't know you could cook," said Scarret. "I didn't either," said Dominique. She went out one night to cover a dock fire, when it was found that the only man on duty had passed out on the floor of the men's room. "Good job," Wynand told her when he read the story, "but try that again and you'll get fired. If you want to stay, you're not to step out of the building."

This was his only comment on her presence. He spoke to her when necessary, briefly and simply, as to any other employee. He gave orders. There were days when they did not have time to see each other. She slept on a couch in the library. Occasionally, in the evening, she would come to his office, for a short rest, when they could take it, and then they talked, about nothing in particular, about small events of the day's work, gaily, like any married couple gossiping about the normal routine of their common life.

They did not speak of Roark or Cortlandt. She had noticed Roark's picture on the wall of his office and asked: "When did you hang that up?"

"Over a year ago." It had been their only reference to Roark. They did not discuss the growing public fury against the Banner. They did not speculate on the future. They felt relief in forgetting the question beyond the walls of the building; it could be forgotten because it stood no longer as a question between them; it was solved and answered; what remained was the peace of the simplified: they had a job to do — the job of keeping a newspaper going — and they were doing it together.

She would come in, unsummoned, in the middle of the night, with a cup of hot coffee, and he would snatch it gratefully, not pausing in his work. He would find fresh sandwiches left on his desk when he needed them badly. He had no time to wonder where she got things. Then he discovered that she had established an electric plate and a stock of supplies in a closet. She cooked breakfast for him, when he had to work all night, she came in carrying dishes on a piece of cardboard for a tray, with the silence of empty streets beyond the windows and the first light of morning on the rooftops.

Once he found her, broom in hand, sweeping an office; the maintenance department had fallen apart, charwomen appeared and disappeared, no one had time to notice.

"Is that what I'm paying you for?" he asked.

"Well, we can't work in a pigsty. I haven't asked you what you're paying me, but I want a raise."

"Drop this thing, for God's sake! It's ridiculous."

"What's ridiculous? It's clean now. It didn't take me long. Is it a good job?"

"It's a good job."

She leaned on the broom handle and laughed. "I believe you thought, like everybody else, that I'm just a kind of luxury object, a high-class type of kept woman, didn't you, Gail?"

"Is this the way you can keep going when you want to?"

"This is the way I've wanted to keep going all my life — if I could find a reason for it."

He learned that her endurance was greater than his. She never showed a sign of exhaustion. He supposed that she slept, but he could not discover when.

At any time, in any part of the building, not seeing him for hours, she was aware of him, she knew when he needed her most. Once, he fell asleep, slumped across his desk. He awakened and found her looking at him. She had turned off the lights, she sat on a chair by the window, in the moonlight, her face turned to him, calm, watching. Her face was the first thing he saw. Lifting his head painfully from his arm, in the first moment, before he could return fully to control and reality, he felt a sudden wrench of anger, helplessness and desperate protest, not remembering what had brought them here, to this, remembering only that they were both caught in some vast, slow process of torture and that he loved her.

She had seen it in his face, before he had completed the movement of straightening his body. She walked to him, she stood by his chair, she took his head and let it rest against her, she held him, and he did not resist, slumped in her arms, she kissed his hair, she whispered: "It will be all right, Gail, it will be all right."

At the end of three weeks Wynand walked out of the building one evening, not caring whether there would be anything left of it when he returned, and went to see Roark.

He had not telephoned Roark since the beginning of the siege. Roark telephoned him often; Wynand answered, quietly, just answering, originating no statement, refusing to prolong the conversation. He had warned Roark at the beginning: "Don't try to come here. I've given orders. You won't be admitted." He had to keep out of his mind the actual form which the issue of his battle could take; he had to forget the fact of Roark's physical existence; because the thought of Roark's person brought the thought of the county jail.

He walked the long distance to the Enright House; walking made the distance longer and safer; a ride in a cab would pull Roark too close to the Banner Building. He kept his glance slanted toward a point six feet ahead of him on the sidewalk; he did not want to look at the city.

"Good evening, Gail," Roark said calmly when he came in.

"I don't know what's a more conspicuous form of bad discipline," said Wynand, throwing his hat down on a table by the door, "to blurt things right out or to ignore them blatantly. I look like hell. Say it."

"You do look like hell. Sit down, rest and don't talk. Then I'll run you a hot bath — no, you don't look that dirty, but it will be good for you for a change. Then we'll talk."

Wynand shook his head and remained standing at the door.

"Howard, the Banner is not helping you. It's ruining you."

It had taken him eight weeks to prepare himself to say that.

"Of course," said Roark. "What of it?"

Wynand would not advance into the room.

"Gail, it doesn't matter, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not counting on public opinion, one way or the other."

"You want me to give in?"

"I want you to hold out if it takes everything you own."

He saw that Wynand understood, that it was the thing Wynand had tried not to face, and that Wynand wanted him to speak.

"I don't expect you to save me. I think I have a chance to win. The strike won't make it better or worse. Don't worry about me. And don't give in. If you stick to the end — you won't need me any longer."

He saw the look of anger, protest — and agreement. He added:

"You know what I'm saying. We'll be better friends than ever — and you'll come to visit me in jail, if necessary. Don't wince, and don't make me say too much. Not now. I'm glad of this strike. I knew that something like that had to happen, when I saw you for the first time. You knew it long before that."

"Two months ago, I promised you ... the one promise I wanted to keep ... "

"You're keeping it."

"Don't you really want to despise me? I wish you'd say it now. I came here to hear it."

"All right. Listen. You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated. There was Henry Cameron who died for my own cause. And you're the publisher of filthy tabloids. But I couldn't say this to him, and I'm saying it to you. There's Steve Mallory who's never compromised with his soul. And you've done nothing but sell yours in every known way. But I couldn't say this to him and I'm saying it to you. Is that what you've always wanted to hear from me? But don't give in."

He turned away, and added: "That's all. We won't talk about your damn strike again. Sit down, I'll get you a drink. Rest, get yourself out of looking like hell."

Wynand returned to the Banner late at night. He took a cab. It did not matter. He did not notice the distance.

Dominique said, "You've seen Roark."

"Yes. How do you know?"

"Here's the Sunday makeup. It's fairly lousy, but it'll have to do. I sent Manning home for a few hours — he was going to collapse. Jackson quit, but we can do without him. Alvah's column was a mess — he can't even keep his grammar straight any more — I rewrote it, but don't tell him, tell him you did."

"Go to sleep. I'll take Manning's place. I'm good for hours."

They went on, and the days passed, and in the mailing room the piles of returns grew, running over into the corridor, white stacks of paper like marble slabs. Fewer copies of the Banner were run off with every edition, but the stacks kept growing. The days passed, days of heroic effort to put out a newspaper that came back unbought and unread.

16.

IN THE glass-smooth mahogany of the long table reserved for the board of directors there was a monogram in colored wood — G W — reproduced from his signature. It had always annoyed the directors. They had no time to notice it now. But an occasional glance fell upon it — and then it was a glance of pleasure.

The directors sat around the table. It was the first meeting in the board's history that had not been summoned by Wynand. But the meeting had convened and Wynand had come. The strike was in its second month.

Wynand stood by his chair at the head of the table. He looked like a drawing from a men's magazine, fastidiously groomed, a white handkerchief in the breast pocket of his dark suit. The directors caught themselves in peculiar thoughts: some thought of British tailors, others — of the House of Lords — of the Tower of London — of the executed English King — or was it a Chancellor? — who had died so well.

They did not want to look at the man before them. They leaned upon visions of the pickets outside — of the perfumed, manicured women who shrieked their support of Ellsworth Toohey in drawing-room discussions — of the broad, flat face of a girl who paced Fifth Avenue with a placard "We Don't Read Wynand" — for support and courage to say what they were saying.

Wynand thought of a crumbling wall on the edge of the Hudson. He heard steps approaching blocks away. Only this time there were no wires in his hand to hold his muscles ready.

"It's gone beyond all sense. Is this a business organization or a charitable society for the defense of personal friends?"

"Three hundred thousand dollars last week ... Never mind how I know it, Gail, no secret about it, your banker told me. All right, it's your money, but if you expect to get that back out of the sheet, let me tell you we're wise to your smart tricks. You're not going to saddle the corporation with that one, not a penny of it, you don't get away with it this time, it's too late, Gail, the day's past for your bright stunts."

Wynand looked at the fleshy lips of the man making sounds, and thought: You've run the Banner, from the beginning, you didn't know it, but I know, it was you, it was your paper, there's nothing to save now.

"Yes, Slottern and his bunch are willing to come back at once, all they ask is that we accept the Union's demands, and they'll pick up the balance of their contracts, on the old terms, even without waiting for you to rebuild circulation — which will be some job, friend, let me tell you — and I think that's pretty white of them. I spoke to Homer yesterday and he gave me his word — care to hear me name the sums involved, Wynand, or do you know it without my help?"

"No, Senator Eldridge wouldn't see you ... Aw, skip it, Gail, we know you flew to Washington last week. What you don't know is that Senator Eldridge is going around saying he wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot pole. And Boss Craig suddenly got called out to Florida, did he? — to sit up with a sick aunt? None of them will pull you out of this one, Gail. This isn't a road-paving deal or a little watered-stock scandal. And you ain't what you used to be."

Wynand thought: I never used to be, I've never been here, why are you afraid to look at me? Don't you know that I'm the least among you? The half-naked women in the Sunday supplement, the babies in the rotogravure section, the editorials on park squirrels, they were your souls given expression, the straight stuff of your souls — but where was mine?

"I'll be damned if I can see any sense to it. Now, if they were demanding a raise in wages, that I could understand, I'd say fight the bastards for all we're worth. But what's this — a God-damn intellectual issue of some kind? Are we losing our shirts for principles or something?"

"Don't you understand? The Banner's a church publication now. Mr. Gail Wynand, the evangelist. We're over a barrel, but we've got ideals."

"Now if it were a real issue, a political issue — but some fool dynamiter who's blown up some dump! Everybody's laughing at us. Honest, Wynand, I've tried to read your editorials and if you want my honest opinion, it's the lousiest stuff ever put in print. You'd think you were writing for college professors!"

Wynand thought: I know you — you're the one who'd give money to a pregnant slut, but not to a starving genius — I've seen your face before — I picked you and I brought you in — when in doubt about your work, remember that man's face, you're writing for him — but, Mr. Wynand, one can't remember his face — one can, child, one can, it will come back to remind you — it will come back and demand payment — and I'll pay — I signed a blank check long ago and now it's presented for collection — but a blank check is always made out to the sum of everything you've got.

"The situation is medieval and a disgrace to democracy." The voice whined. It was Mitchell Layton speaking. "It's about time somebody had some say around here. One man running all those papers as he damn pleases — what is this, the nineteenth century?" Layton pouted; he looked somewhere in the direction of a banker across the table. "Has anybody here ever bothered to inquire about my ideas? I've got ideas. We've all got to pool ideas. What I mean is teamwork, one big orchestra. It's about time this paper had a modem, liberal, progressive policy! For instance, take the question of the sharecroppers ... "

"Shut up, Mitch," said Alvah Scarret. Scarret had drops of sweat running down his temples; he didn't know why; he wanted the board to win; there was just something in the room ... it's too hot in here, he thought, I wish somebody'd open a window.

"I won't shut up!" shrieked Mitchell Layton. "I'm just as good as ... "

"Please, Mr. Layton," said the banker.

"All right," said Layton, "all right. Don't forget who holds the biggest hunk of stock next to Superman here." He jerked his thumb at Wynand, not looking at him. "Just don't forget it. Just you guess who's going to run things around here."

"Gail," said Alvah Scarret, looking up at Wynand, his eyes strangely honest and tortured, "Gail, it's no use. But we can save the pieces. Look, if we just admit that we were wrong about Cortlandt and ... and if we just take Harding back, he's a valuable man, and ... maybe Toohey ... "

"No one is to mention the name of Toohey in this discussion," said Wynand.

Mitchell Layton snapped his mouth open and dropped it shut again.

"That's it, Gail!" cried Alvah Scarret. "That's great! We can bargain and make them an offer. We'll reverse our policy on Cortlandt — that, we've got to, not for the damn Union, but we've got to rebuild circulation, Gail — so we'll offer them that and we'll take Harding, Alien and Falk, but not To ... not Ellsworth. We give in and they give in. Saves everybody's face. Is that it, Gail?"

Wynand said nothing.

"I think that's it, Mr. Scarret," said the banker. "I think that's the solution. After all, Mr. Wynand must be allowed to maintain his prestige. We can sacrifice ... a columnist and keep peace among ourselves."

"I don't see it!" yelled Mitchell Layton. "I don't see it at all! Why should we sacrifice Mr ... a great liberal, just because ... "

"I stand with Mr. Scarret," said the man who had spoken of Senators, and the voices of the others seconded him, and the man who had criticized the editorials said suddenly, in the general noise: "I think Gail Wynand was a hell of a swell boss after all!" There was something about Mitchell Layton which he didn't want to see. Now he looked at Wynand, for protection. Wynand did not notice him.

"Gail?" asked Scarret. "Gail, what do you say?" There was no answer.

"God damn it, Wynand, it's now or never! This can't go on!"

"Make up your mind or get out!"

"I'll buy you out!" shrieked Layton. "Want to sell? Want to sell and get the hell out of it?"

"For God's sake, Wynand, don't be a fool!"

"Gail, it's the Banner ... " whispered Scarret. "It's our Banner ... "

"We'll stand by you, Gail, we'll all chip in, we'll pull the old paper back on its feet, we'll do as you say, you'll be the boss — but for God's sake, act like a boss now!"

"Quiet, gentlemen, quiet! Wynand, this is final: we switch policy on Cortlandt, we take Harding, Alien and Falk back, and we save the wreck. Yes or no?"

There was no answer.

"Wynand, you know it's that — or you have to close the Banner. You can't keep this up, even if you bought us all out. Give in or close the Banner. You had better give in."

Wynand heard that. He had heard it through all the speeches. He had heard it for days before the meeting. He knew it better than any man present. Close the Banner.

He saw a single picture: the new masthead rising over the door of the Gazette.

"You had better give in."

He made a step back. It was not a wall behind him. It was only the side of his chair.

He thought of the moment in his bedroom when he had almost pulled a trigger. He knew he was pulling it now.

"All right," he said.

It's only a bottle cap, thought Wynand looking down at a speck of glitter under his feet; a bottle cap ground into the pavement. The pavements of New York are full of things like that — bottle caps, safety pins, campaign buttons, sink chains; sometimes — lost jewels; it's all alike now, flattened, ground in; it makes the pavements sparkle at night. The fertilizer of a city. Someone drank the bottle empty and threw the cap away. How many cars have passed over it? Could one retrieve it now? Could one kneel and dig with bare hands and tear it out again? I had no right to hope for escape. I had no right to kneel and seek redemption. Millions of years ago, when the earth was being born, there were living things like me: flies caught in resin that became amber, animals caught in ooze that became rock. I am a man of the twentieth century and I became a bit of tin in the pavements, for the trucks of New York to roll over.

He walked slowly, the collar of his topcoat raised. The street stretched before him, empty, and the buildings ahead were like the backs of books lining a shelf, assembled without order, of all sizes. The comers he passed led to black channels; street lamps gave the city a protective cover, but it cracked in spots. He turned a corner when he saw a slant of light ahead; it was a goal for three or four blocks.

The light came from the window of a pawnshop. The shop was closed, but a glaring bulb hung there to discourage looters who might be reduced to this. He stopped and looked at it. He thought, the most indecent sight on earth, a pawnshop window. The things which had been sacred to men, and the things which had been precious, surrendered to the sight of all, to the pawing and the bargaining, trash to the indifferent eyes of strangers, the equality of a junk heap, typewriters and violins — the tools of dreams, old photographs and wedding rings — the tags of love, together with soiled trousers, coffee pots, ash trays, pornographic plaster figures; the refuse of despair, pledged, not sold, not cut off in clean finality, but hocked to a stillborn hope, never to be redeemed. "Hello, Gail Wynand," he said to the things in the window, and walked on.

He felt an iron grate under his feet and an odor struck him in the face, an odor of dust, sweat and dirty clothing, worse than the smell of stockyards, because it had a homey, normal quality, like decomposition made routine. The grating of a subway. He thought, this is the residue of many people put together, of human bodies pressed into a mass, with no space to move, with no air to breathe. This is the sum, even though down there, among the packed flesh, one can find the smell of starched white dresses, of clean hair, of healthy young skin. Such is the nature of sums and of quests for the lowest common denominator. What, then, is the residue of many human minds put together, unaired, unspaced, undifferentiated? The Banner, he thought, and walked on.

My city, he thought, the city I loved, the city I thought I ruled.

He had walked out of the board meeting, he had said: "Take over, Alvah, until I come back." He had not stopped to see Manning drunk with exhaustion at the city desk, nor the people in the city room, still functioning, waiting, knowing what was being decided in the board room; nor Dominique. Scarret would tell them. He had walked out of the building and gone to his penthouse and sat alone in the bedroom without windows. Nobody had come to disturb him.

When he left the penthouse, it was safe to go out: it was dark. He passed a newsstand and saw late editions of the afternoon papers announcing the settlement of the Wynand strike. The Union had accepted Scarret's compromise. He knew that Scarret would take care of all the rest. Scarret would replate the front page of tomorrow's Banner. Scarret would write the editorial that would appear on the front page. He thought, the presses are rolling right now. Tomorrow morning's Banner will be out on the streets in an hour.

He walked at random. He owned nothing, but he was owned by any part of the city. It was right that the city should now direct his way and that he should be moved by the pull of chance corners. Here I am, my masters, I am coming to salute you and acknowledge, wherever you want me, I shall go as I'm told. I'm the man who wanted power.

That woman sitting on the stoop of an old brownstone house, her fat white knees spread apart — the man pushing the white brocade of his stomach out of a cab in front of a great hotel — the little man sipping root beer at a drugstore counter — the woman leaning over a stained mattress on the sill of a tenement window — the taxi driver parked on a corner — the lady with orchids, drunk at the table of a sidewalk cafe — the toothless woman selling chewing gum — the man in shirt sleeves, leaning against the door of a poolroom — they are my masters. My owners, my rulers without a face.

Stand here, he thought, and count the lighted windows of a city. You cannot do it But behind each yellow rectangle that climbs, one over another, to the sky — under each bulb — down to there, see that spark over the river which is not a star? — there are people whom you will never see and who are your masters. At the supper tables, in the drawing rooms, in their beds and in their cellars, in their studies and in their bathrooms. Speeding in the subways under your feet. Crawling up in elevators through vertical cracks around you. Jolting past you in every bus. Your masters, Gail Wynand. There is a net — longer than the cables that coil through the walls of this city, larger than the mesh of pipes that carry water, gas and refuse — there is another hidden net around you; it is strapped to you, and the wires lead to every hand in the city. They jerked the wires and you moved. You were a ruler of men. You held a leash. A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends.

My masters, the anonymous, the unselected. They gave me a penthouse, an office, a yacht. To them, to any one of them who wished, for the sum of three cents, I sold Howard Roark.

He walked past an open marble court, a cave cut deep into a building, filled with light, spurting the sudden cold of air-conditioning. It was a movie theater and the marquee had letters made of rainbows: Romeo and Juliet. A placard stood by the glass column of the box office: "Bill Shakespeare's immortal classic! But there's nothing highbrow about it! Just a simple human love story. A boy from the Bronx meets a girl from Brooklyn. Just like the folks next door. Just like you and me."

He walked past the door of a saloon. There was a smell of stale beer. A woman sat slumped, breasts flattened against the table top. A juke box played Wagner's "Song to the Evening Star," adapted, in swing time.

He saw the trees of Central Park. He walked, his eyes lowered. He was passing by the Aquitania Hotel.

He came to a corner. He had escaped other corners like it, but this one caught him. It was a dim corner, a slice of sidewalk trapped between the wall of a closed garage and the pillars of an elevated station. He saw the rear end of a truck disappearing down the street. He had not seen the name on it, but he knew what truck it was. A newsstand crouched under the iron stairs of the elevated. He moved his eyes slowly. The fresh pile was there, spread out for him. Tomorrow's Banner.

He did not come closer. He stood, waiting. He thought, I still have a few minutes in which not to know.

He saw faceless people stopping at the stand, one after another. They came for different papers, but they bought the Banner also, when they noticed its front page. He stood pressed to the wall, waiting. He thought, it is right that I should be the last to learn what I have said.

Then he could delay no longer: no customers came, the stand stood deserted, papers spread in the yellow light of a bulb, waiting for him. He could see no vendor in the black hovel beyond the bulb. The street was empty. A long corridor filled by the skeleton of the elevated. Stone paving, blotched walls, the interlacing of iron pillars. There were lighted windows, but they looked as if no people moved inside the walls. A train thundered over his head, a long roll of clangor that went shuddering down the pillars into the earth. It looked like an aggregation of metal rushing without human driver through the night.

He waited for the sound to die, then he walked to the stand. "The Banner," he said. He did not see who sold him the paper, whether it was a man or a woman. He saw only a gnarled brown hand pushing the copy forward.

He started walking away, but stopped while crossing the street. There was a picture of Roark on the front page. It was a good picture. The calm face, the sharp cheekbones, the implacable mouth. He read the editorial, leaning against a pillar of the elevated.

"We have always endeavored to give our readers the truth without fear or prejudice ...

" ... charitable consideration and the benefit of the doubt even to a man charged with an outrageous crime ...

" ... but after conscientious investigation and in the light of new evidence placed before us, we find ourselves obliged honestly to admit that we might have been too lenient ...

" ... A society awakened to a new sense of responsibility toward the underprivileged ... " ... We join the voice of public opinion ... " ... The past, the career, the personality of Howard Roark seem to support the widespread impression that he is a reprehensible character, a dangerous, unprincipled, antisocial type of man ...

" ... If found guilty, as seems inevitable, Howard Roark must be made to bear the fullest penalty the law can impose on him." It was signed "Gail Wynand."

When he looked up, he was in a brightly lighted street, on a trim sidewalk, looking at a wax figure exquisitely contorted on a satin chaise longue in a shop window; the figure wore a salmon-colored negligee, lucite sandals and a string of pearls suspended from one raised finger.

He did not know when he had dropped the paper. It was not in his hands any longer. He glanced back. It would be impossible to find a discarded paper lying on some street he did not know he had passed. He thought, what for? There are other papers like it The city is full of them.

"You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated ... "

Howard, I wrote that editorial forty years ago. I wrote it one night when I was sixteen and stood on the roof of a tenement

He walked on. Another street lay before him, a sudden cut of long emptiness and a chain of green traffic lights strung out to the horizon. Like a rosary without end. He thought, now walk from green bead to green bead. He thought, these are not the words; but the words kept ringing with his steps: Mea culpa — mea culpa — mea maxima culpa.

He went past a window of old shoes corroded by wear — past the door of a mission with a cross above it — past the peeling poster of a political candidate who ran two years ago — past a grocery store with barrels of rotting greens on the sidewalk. The streets were contracting, walls drawing closer together. He could smell the odor of the river, and there were wads of fog over the rare lights.

He was in Hell's Kitchen.

The facades of the buildings around him were like the walls of secret backyards suddenly exposed: decay without reticence, past the need of privacy or shame. He heard shrieks coming from a saloon on a corner; he could not tell whether it was joy or brawling.

He stood in the middle of a street. He looked slowly down the mouth of every dark crevice, up the streaked walls, to the windows, to the roofs.

I never got out of here.

I never got out. I surrendered to the grocery man — to the deck hands on the ferryboat — to the owner of the poolroom. You don't run things around here. You don't run things around here. You've never run things anywhere, Gail Wynand. You've only added yourself to the things they ran.

Then he looked up, across the city, to the shapes of the great skyscrapers. He saw a string of lights rising unsupported in black space, a glowing pinnacle anchored to nothing, a small, brilliant square hanging detached in the sky. He knew the famous buildings to which these belonged, he could reconstruct their forms in space. He thought, you're my judges and witnesses. You rise, unhindered, above the sagging roofs. You shoot your gracious tension to the stars, out of the slack, the tired, the accidental. The eyes one mile out on the ocean will see none of this and none of this will matter, but you will be the presence and the city. As down the centuries, a few men stand in lonely rectitude that we may look and say, there is a human race behind us. One can't escape from you; the streets change, but one looks up and there you stand, unchanged. You have seen me walking through the streets tonight. You have seen all my steps and all my years. It's you that I've betrayed. For I was born to be one of you.

He walked on. It was late. Circles of light lay undisturbed on the empty sidewalks under the lampposts. The horns of taxis shrieked once in a while like doorbells ringing through the corridors of a vacant interior. He saw discarded newspapers, as he passed: on the pavements, on park benches, in the wire trash-baskets on corners. Many of them were the Banner. Many copies of the Banner had been read in the city tonight. He thought, we're building circulation, Alvah.

He stopped. He saw a paper spread out in the gutter before him, front page up. It was the Banner. He saw Roark's picture. He saw the gray print of a rubber heel across Roark's face.

He bent, his body folding itself down slowly, with both knees, both arms, and picked up the paper. He folded the front page and put it in his pocket. He walked on.

An unknown rubber heel, somewhere in the city, on an unknown foot that I released to march.

I released them all. I made every one of those who destroyed me. There is a beast on earth, dammed safely by its own impotence. I broke the dam. They would have remained helpless. They can produce nothing. I gave them the weapon. I gave them my strength, my energy, my living power. I created a great voice and let them dictate the words. The woman who threw the beet leaves in my face had a right to do it. I made it possible for her.

Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness. Alvah Scarret can be forgiven. He had nothing to betray. Mitchell Layton can be forgiven. But not I. I was not born to be a second-hander.

17.

IT WAS a summer day, cloudless and cool, as if the sun were screened by an invisible film of water, and the energy of heat had been transformed into a sharper clarity, an added brilliance of outline for the buildings of the city. In the streets, scattered like scraps of gray foam, there were a great many copies of the Banner. The city read, chuckling, the statement of Wynand's renunciation.

"That's that," said Gus Webb, chairman of the "We Don't Read Wynand" Committee. "It's slick," said Ike. "I'd like one peek, just one peek, at the great Mr. Gail Wynand's face today," said Sally Brent. "It's about time," said Homer Slottern. "Isn't it splendid? Wynand's surrendered," said a tight-lipped woman; she knew little about Wynand and nothing about the issue, but she liked to hear of people surrendering. In a kitchen, after dinner, a fat woman scraped the remnants off the dishes onto a sheet of newspaper; she never read the front page, only the installments of a love serial in the second section; she wrapped onion peelings and lamb-chop bones in a copy of the Banner.

"It's stupendous," said Lancelot Clokey, "only I'm really sore at that Union, Ellsworth. How could they double-cross you like that?"

"Don't be a sap, Lance," said Ellsworth Toohey. "What do you mean?"

"I told them to accept the terms."

"You did?"

"Yep."

"But Jesus! 'One Small Voice' ... "

"You can wait for 'One Small Voice' another month or so, can't you? I've filed suit with the labor board today, to be reinstated in my job on the Banner. There are more ways than one to skin a cat, Lance. The skinning isn't important once you've broken its spine."

That evening Roark pressed the bell button at the door of Wynand's penthouse. The butler opened the door and said: "Mr. Wynand cannot see you, Mr. Roark." From the sidewalk across the street Roark looked up and saw a square of light high over the roofs, in the window of Wynand's study.

In the morning Roark came to Wynand's office in the Banner Building. Wynand's secretary told him: "Mr. Wynand cannot see you, Mr. Roark." She added, her voice polite, disciplined: "Mr. Wynand has asked me to tell you that he does not wish ever to see you again."

Roark wrote him a long letter: " ... Gail, I know. I hoped you could escape it, but since it had to happen, start again from where you are. I know what you're doing to yourself. You're not doing it for my sake, it's not up to me, but if this will help you I want to say that I'm repeating, now, everything I've ever said to you. Nothing has changed for me. You're still what you were. I'm not saying that I forgive you, because there can be no such question between us. But if you can't forgive yourself, will you let me do it? Let me say that it doesn't matter, it's not the final verdict on you. Give me the right to let you forget it. Go on just on my faith until you've recovered. I know it's something no man can do for another, but if I am what I've been to you, you'll accept it. Call it a blood transfusion. You need it. Take it. It's harder than fighting that strike. Do it for my sake, if that will help you. But do it. Come back. There will be another chance. What you think you've lost can neither be lost nor found. Don't let it go."

The letter came back to Roark, unopened.

Alvah Scarret ran the Banner. Wynand sat in his office. He had removed Roark's picture from the wall. He attended to advertising contracts, expenses, accounts. Scarret took care of the editorial policy. Wynand did not read the contents of the Banner.

When Wynand appeared in any department of the building, the employees obeyed him as they had obeyed him before. He was still a machine and they knew that it was a machine more dangerous than ever: a car running downhill, without combustion or brakes.

He slept in his penthouse. He had not seen Dominique. Scarret had told him that she had gone back to the country. Once Wynand ordered his secretary to telephone Connecticut. He stood by her desk while she asked the butler whether Mrs. Wynand was there. The butler answered that she was. The secretary hung up and Wynand went back to his office.

He thought he would give himself a few days. Then he'd return to Dominique. Their marriage would be what she had wanted it to be at first — "Mrs. Wynand-Papers." He would accept it.

Wait, he thought in an agony of impatience, wait. You must learn to face her as you are now. Train yourself to be a beggar. There must be no pretense at things to which you have no right. No equality, no resistance, no pride in holding your strength against hers. Only acceptance now. Stand before her as a man who can give her nothing, who will live on what she chooses to grant him. It will be contempt, but it will come from her and it will be a bond. Show her that you recognize this. There is a kind of dignity in a renunciation of dignity openly admitted. Learn it. Wait ... He sat in the study of his penthouse, his head on the arm of his chair. There were no witnesses in the empty rooms around him ... Dominique, he thought, I will have no claim to make except that I need you so much. And that I love you. I told you once not to consider it. Now I'll use it as a tin cup. But I'll use it. I love you ...

Dominique lay stretched out on the shore of the lake. She looked at the house on the hill, at the tree branches above her. Flat on her back, hands crossed under her head, she studied the motion of leaves against the sky. It was an earnest occupation, giving her full contentment. She thought, it's a lovely kind of green, there's a difference between the color of plants and the color of objects, this has light in it, this is not just green, but also the living force of the tree made visible, I don't have to look down, I can see the branches, the trunk, the roots just by looking at that color. That fire around the edges is the sun, I don't have to see it, I can tell what the whole countryside looks like today. The spots of light weaving in circles — that's the lake, the special kind of light that comes refracted from water, the lake is beautiful today, and it's better not to see it, just to guess by these spots. I have never been able to enjoy it before, the sight of the earth, it's such great background, but it has no meaning except as a background, and I thought of those who owned it and then it hurt me too much. I can love it now. They don't own it. They own nothing. They've never won. I have seen the life of Gail Wynand, and now I know. One cannot hate the earth in their name. The earth is beautiful. And it is a background, but not theirs.

She knew what she had to do. But she would give herself a few days. She thought, I've learned to bear anything except happiness. I must learn how to carry it. How not to break under it. It's the only discipline I'll need from now on.

Roark stood at the window of his house in Monadnock Valley. He had rented the house for the summer; he went there when he wanted loneliness and rest. It was a quiet evening. The window opened on a small ledge in a frame of trees, hanging against the sky. A strip of sunset light stretched above the dark treetops. He knew that there were houses below, but they could not be seen. He was as grateful as any other tenant for the way in which he had built this place.

He heard the sound of a car approaching up the road at the other side. He listened, astonished. He expected no guests. The car stopped. He walked to open the door. He felt no astonishment when he saw Dominique.

She came in as if she had left this house half an hour ago. She wore no hat, no stockings, just sandals and a dress intended for back country roads, a narrow sheath of dark blue linen with short sleeves, like a smock for gardening. She did not look as if she had driven across three states, but as if she were returning from a walk down the hill. He knew that this was to be the solemnity of the moment — that it needed no solemnity; it was not to be stressed and set apart, it was not this particular evening, but the completed meaning of seven years behind them.

"Howard."

He stood as if he were looking at the sound of his name in the room. He had all he had wanted.

But there was one thought that remained as pain, even now. He said:

"Dominique, wait till he recovers."

"You know he won't recover."

"Have a little pity on him."

"Don't speak their language."

"He had no choice."

"He could have closed the paper."

"It was his life."

"This is mine."

He did not know that Wynand had once said all love is exception-making; and Wynand would not know that Roark had loved him enough to make his greatest exception, one moment when he had tried to compromise. Then he knew it was useless, like all sacrifices. What he said was his signature under her decision:

"I love you."

She looked about the room, to let the ordinary reality of walls and chairs help her keep the discipline she had been learning for this moment. The walls he had designed, the chairs he used, a package of his cigarettes on a table, the routine necessities of life that could acquire splendor when life became what it was now.

"Howard, I know what you intend to do at the trial. So it won't make any difference if they learn the truth about us."

"It won't make any difference."

"When you came that night and told me about Cortlandt, I didn't try to stop you. I knew you had to do it, it was your time to set the terms on which you could go on. This is my time. My Cortlandt explosion. You must let me do it my way. Don't question me. Don't protect me. No matter what I do."

"I know what you'll do."

"You know that I have to?"

"Yes."

She bent one arm from the elbow, fingers lifted, in a short, backward jolt, as if tossing the subject over her shoulder. It was settled and not to be discussed.

She turned away from him, she walked across the room, to let the casual ease of her steps make this her home, to state that his presence was to be the rule for ail her coming days and she had no need to do what she wanted most at this moment: stand and look at him. She knew also what she was delaying, because she was not ready and would never be ready. She stretched her hand out for his package of cigarettes on the table.

His fingers closed over her wrist and he pulled her hand back. He pulled her around to face him, and then he held her and his mouth was on hers. She knew that every moment of seven years when she had wanted this and stopped the pain and thought she had won, was not past, had never been stopped, had lived on, stored, adding hunger to hunger, and now she had to feel it all, the touch of his body, the answer and the waiting together.

She didn't know whether her discipline had helped; not too well, she thought, because she saw that he had lifted her in his arms, carried her to a chair and sat down, holding her on his knees; he laughed without sound, as he would have laughed at a child, but the firmness of his hands holding her showed concern and a kind of steadying caution. Then it seemed simple, she had nothing to hide from him, she whispered: "Yes, Howard ... that much ... " and he said: "It was very hard for me — all these years." And the years were ended.

She slipped down, to sit on the floor, her elbows propped on his knees, she looked up at him and smiled, she knew that she could not have reached this white serenity except as the sum of all the colors, of all the violence she had known. "Howard ... willingly, completely, and always ... without reservations, without fear of anything they can do to you or me ... in any way you wish ... as your wife or your mistress, secretly or openly ... here, or in a furnished room I'll take in some town near a jail where I'll see you through a wire net ... it won't matter ... Howard, if you win the trial — even that won't matter too much. You've won long ago ... I'll remain what I am, and I'll remain with you — now and ever — in any way you want ... "

He held her hands in his, she saw his shoulders sagging down to her, she saw him helpless, surrendered to this moment, as she was — and she knew that even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness, yet they could let each other see it without need of protection. It was growing dark, the room was indistinguishable, only the window remained and his shoulders against the sky in the window.

She awakened with the sun in her eyes. She lay on her back, looking at the ceiling as she had looked at the leaves. Not to move, to guess by hints, to see everything through the greater intensity of implication. The broken triangles of light on the angular modeling of the ceiling's plastic tiles meant that it was morning and that this was a bedroom at Monadnock, the geometry of fire and structure above her designed by him. The fire was white — that meant it was very early and the rays came through clean country air, with nothing anywhere in space between this bedroom and the sun. The weight of the blanket, heavy and intimate on her naked body, was everything that had been last night. And the skin she felt against her arm was Roark asleep beside her.

She slipped out of bed. She stood at the window, her arms raised, holding on to the frame at each side. She thought if she looked back she would see no shadow of her body on the floor, she felt as if the sunlight went straight through her, because her body had no weight.

But she had to hurry before he awakened. She found his pyjamas in a dresser drawer and put them on. She went to the living room, closing the door carefully behind her. She picked up the telephone and asked for the nearest sheriff's office.

"This is Mrs. Gail Wynand," she said. "I am speaking from the house of Mr. Howard Roark at Monadnock Valley. I wish to report that my star-sapphire ring was stolen here last night ... About five thousand dollars ... It was a present from Mr. Roark ... Can you get here within an hour? ... Thank you."

She went to the kitchen, made coffee and stood watching the glow of the electric coil under the coffee pot, thinking that it was the most beautiful light on earth.

She set the table by the large window in the living room. He came out, wearing nothing but a dressing gown, and laughed at the sight of her in his pyjamas. She said: "Don't dress. Sit down. Let's have breakfast."

They were finishing when they heard the sound of the car stopping outside. She smiled and walked to open the door.

There were a sheriff, a deputy and two reporters from local papers.

"Good morning," said Dominique. "Come in."

"Mrs ... Wynand?" said the sheriff.

"That's right. Mrs. Gail Wynand. Come in. Sit down."

In the ludicrous folds of the pyjamas, with dark cloth bulging over a belt wound tightly, with sleeves hanging over her fingertips, she had all the poised elegance she displayed in her best hostess gown. She was the only one who seemed to find nothing unusual in the situation.

The sheriff held a notebook as if he did not know what to do with it. She helped him to find the right questions and answered them precisely like a good newspaper woman.

"It was a star-sapphire ring set in platinum. I took it off and left it here, on this table, next to my purse, before going to bed ... It was about ten o'clock last night ... When I got up this morning, it was gone ... Yes, this window was open ... No, we didn't hear anything ... No, it was not insured, I have not had the time, Mr. Roark gave it to me recently ... No, there are no servants here and no other guests ... Yes, please look through the house ... Living room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen ... Yes, of course, you may look too, gentlemen. The press, I believe? Do you wish to ask me any questions?"

There were no questions to ask. The story was complete. The reporters had never seen a story of this nature offered in this manner.

She tried not to look at Roark after her first glance at his face. But he kept his promise. He did not try to stop her or protect her. When questioned, he answered, enough to support her statements.

Then the men departed. They seemed glad to leave. Even the sheriff knew that he would not have to conduct a search for that ring.

Dominique said:

"I'm sorry. I know it was terrible for you. But it was the only way to get it into the papers."

"You should have told me which one of your star sapphires I gave you."

"I've never had any. I don't like star sapphires."

"That was a more thorough job of dynamiting than Cortlandt."

"Yes. Now Gail is blasted over to the side where he belongs. So he thinks you're an 'unprincipled, antisocial type of man'? Now let him see the Banner smearing me also. Why should he be spared that? Sorry. Howard, I don't have your sense of mercy. I've read that editorial. Don't comment on this. Don't say anything about self-sacrifice or I'll break and ... and I'm not quite as strong as that sheriff is probably thinking. I didn't do it for you. I've made it worse for you — I've added scandal to everything else they'll throw at you. But, Howard, now we stand together — against all of them. You'll be a convict and I'll be an adulteress. Howard, do you remember that I was afraid to share you with lunch wagons and strangers' windows? Now I'm not afraid to have this past night smeared all over their newspapers. My darling, do you see why I'm happy and why I'm free?"

He said:

"I'll never remind you afterward that you're crying, Dominique."

The story, including the pyjamas, the dressing gown, the breakfast table and the single bed, was in all the afternoon papers of New York that day.

Alvah Scarret walked into Wynand's office and threw a newspaper down on his desk. Scarret had never discovered how much he loved Wynand, until now, and he was so hurt that he could express it only in furious abuse. He gulped:

"God damn you, you blasted fool! It serves you right! It serves you right and I'm glad, damn your witless soul! Now what are we going to do?"

Wynand read the story and sat looking at the paper. Scarret stood before the desk. Nothing happened. It was just an office, a man sat at a desk holding a newspaper. He saw Wynand's hands, one at each side of the sheet, and the hands were still. No, he thought, normally a man would not be able to hold his hands like that, lifted and unsupported, without a tremor.

Wynand raised his head. Scarret could discover nothing in his eyes, except a kind of mild astonishment, as if Wynand were wondering what Scarret was doing here. Then, in terror, Scarret whispered:

"Gail, what are we going to do?"

"We'll run it," said Wynand. "It's news."

"But ... how?"

"In any way you wish."

Scarret's voice leaped ahead, because he knew it was now or never, he would not have the courage to attempt this again; and because he was caught here, he was afraid to back toward the door.

"Gail, you must divorce her." He found himself still standing there, and he went on, not looking at Wynand, screaming in order to get it said: "Gail, you've got no choice now! You've got to keep what's left of your reputation! You've got to divorce her and it's you who must file the suit!"

"All right."

"Will you? At once? Will you let Paul file the papers at once?"

"All right."

Scarret hurried out of the room. He rushed to his own office, slammed the door, seized the telephone and called Wynand's lawyer. He explained and went on repeating: "Drop everything and file it now, Paul, now, today, hurry, Paul, before he changes his mind!"

Wynand drove to his country house. Dominique was there, waiting for him.

She stood up when he entered her room. She stepped forward, so that there would be no furniture between them; she wished him to see her whole body. He stood across the empty space and looked at her as if he were observing them both at once, an impartial spectator who saw Dominique and a man facing her, but no Gail Wynand.

She waited, but he said nothing.

"Well, I've given you a story that will build circulation, Gail."

He had heard, but he looked as if nothing of the present were relevant. He looked like a bank teller balancing a stranger's account that had been overdrawn and had to be closed. He said:

"I would like only to know this, if you'll tell me: that was the first time since our marriage?"

"Yes."

"But it was not the first time?"

"No. He was the first man who had me."

"I think I should have understood. You married Peter Keating. Right after the Stoddard trial."

"Do you wish to 'know everything? I want to tell you. I met him when he was working in a granite quarry. Why not? You'll put him in a chain gang or a jute mill. He was working in a quarry. He didn't ask my consent. He raped me. That's how it began. Want to use it? Want to run it in the Banner?"

"He loved you."

"Yes."

"Yet he built this house for us."

"Yes."

"I only wanted to know."

He turned to leave.

"God damn you!" she cried. "If you can take it like this, you had no right to become what you became!"

"That's why I'm taking it."

He walked out of the room. He closed the door softly.

Guy Francon telephoned Dominique that evening. Since his retirement he had lived alone on his country estate near the quarry town. She had refused to answer calls today, but she took the receiver when the maid told her that it was Mr. Francon. Instead of the fury she expected, she heard a gentle voice saying:

"Hello, Dominique."

"Hello, Father."

"You're going to leave Wynand now?"

"Yes."

"You shouldn't move to the city. It's not necessary. Don't overdo it. Come and stay here with me. Until ... the Cortlandt trial."

The things he had not said and the quality of his voice, firm, simple and with a note that sounded close to happiness, made her answer, after a moment:

"All right, Father." It was a girl's voice, a daughter's voice, with a tired, trusting, wistful gaiety. "I'll get there about midnight. Have a glass of milk for me and some sandwiches."

"Try not to speed as you always do. The roads aren't too good."

When she arrived, Guy Francon met her at the door. They both smiled, and she knew that there would be no questions, no reproaches. He led her to the small morning room where he had set the food on a table by a window open to a dark lawn. There was a smell of grass, candles on the table and a bunch of jasmine in a silver bowl.

She sat, her fingers closed about a cold glass, and he sat across the table, munching a sandwich peacefully.

"Want to talk, Father?"

"No. I want you to drink your milk and go to bed."

"All right."

He picked up an olive and sat studying it thoughtfully, twisting it on a colored toothpick. Then he glanced up at her.

"Look, Dominique. I can't attempt to understand it all. But I know this much — that it's the right thing for you. This time, it's the right man."

"Yes, Father."

"That's why I'm glad."

She nodded.

"Tell Mr. Roark that he can come here any time he wants."

She smiled. 'Tell whom, Father?"

"Tell ... Howard."

Her arm lay on the table; her head dropped down on her arm. He looked at the gold hair in the candlelight. She said, because it was easier to control a voice: "Don't let me fall asleep here. I'm tired."

But he answered:

"He'll be acquitted, Dominique."

All the newspapers of New York were brought to Wynand's office each day, as he had ordered. He read every word of what was written and whispered in town. Everybody knew that the story had been a self-frame-up; the wife of a multimillionaire would not report the loss of a five-thousand-dollar ring in the circumstances; but this did not prevent anyone from accepting the story as given and commenting accordingly. The most offensive comments were spread on the pages of the Banner.

Alvah Scarret had found a crusade to which he devoted himself with the truest fervor he had ever experienced. He felt that it was his atonement for any disloyalty he might have committed toward Wynand in the past. He saw a way to redeem Wynand's name. He set out to sell Wynand to the public as the victim of a great passion for a depraved woman; it was Dominique who had forced her husband to champion an immoral cause, against his better judgment; she had almost wrecked her husband's paper, his standing, his reputation, the achievement of his whole life — for the sake of her lover. Scarret begged readers to forgive Wynand — a tragic, self-sacrificing love was his justification. It was an inverse ratio in Scarret's calculations: every filthy adjective thrown at Dominique created sympathy for Wynand in the reader's mind; this fed Scarret's smear talent. It worked. The public responded, the Banner's old feminine readers in particular. It helped in the slow, painful work of the paper's reconstruction.

Letters began to arrive, generous in their condolences, unrestrained in the indecency of their comment on Dominique Francon. "Like the old days, Gail," said Scarret happily, "just like the old days!" He piled all the letters on Wynand's desk.

Wynand sat alone in his office with the letters. Scarret could not suspect that this was the worst of the suffering Gail Wynand was to know. He made himself read every letter. Dominique, whom he had tried to save from the Banner ...

When they met in the building, Scarret looked at him expectantly, with an entreating, tentative half-smile, an eager pupil waiting for the teacher's recognition of a lesson well learned and well done. Wynand said nothing. Scarret ventured once:

"It was clever, wasn't it, Gail?"

"Yes."

"Have any idea on where we can milk it some more?"

"It's your job, Alvah."

"She's really the cause of everything, Gail. Long before all this. When you married her. I was afraid then. That's what started it. Remember when you didn't allow us to cover your wedding? That was a sign. She's ruined the Banner. But I'll be damned if I don't rebuild it now right on her own body. Just as it was. Our old Banner."

"Yes."

"Got any suggestions, Gail? What else would you like me to do?"

"Anything you wish, Alvah."

18.

A TREE BRANCH hung in the open window. The leaves moved against the sky, implying sun and summer and an inexhaustible earth to be used. Dominique thought of the world as background. Wynand thought of two hands bending a tree branch to explain the meaning of life. The leaves drooped, touching the spires of New York's skyline far across the river. The skyscrapers stood like shafts of sunlight, washed white by distance and summer. A crowd filled the county courtroom, witnessing the trial of Howard Roark.

Roark sat at the defense table. He listened calmly.

Dominique sat in the third row of spectators. Looking at her, people felt as if they had seen a smile. She did not smile. She looked at the leaves in the window.

Gail Wynand sat at the back of the courtroom. He had come in, alone, when the room was full. He had not noticed the stares and the flashbulbs exploding around him. He had stood in the aisle for a moment, surveying the place as if there were no reason why he should not survey it. He wore a gray summer suit and a panama hat with a drooping brim turned up at one side. His glance went over Dominique as over the rest of the courtroom. When he sat down, he looked at Roark. From the moment of Wynand's entrance Roark's eyes kept returning to him. Whenever Roark looked at him, Wynand turned away.

"The motive which the State proposes to prove," the prosecutor was making his opening address to the jury, "is beyond the realm of normal human emotions. To the majority of us it will appear monstrous and inconceivable."

Dominique sat with Mallory, Heller, Lansing, Enright, Mike — and Guy Francon, to the shocked disapproval of his friends. Across the aisle, celebrities formed a comet: from the small point of Ellsworth Toohey, well in front, a tail of popular names stretched through the crowd: Lois Cook, Gordon L. Prescott, Gus Webb, Lancelot Clokey, Ike, Jules Fougler, Sally Brent, Homer Slottern, Mitchell Layton.

"Even as the dynamite which swept a building away, his motive blasted all sense of humanity out of this man's soul. We are dealing, gentlemen of the jury, with the most vicious explosive on earth — the egotist!"

On the chairs, on the window sills, in the aisles, pressed against the walls, the human mass was blended like a monolith, except for the pale ovals of faces. The faces stood out, separate, lonely, no two alike. Behind each, there were the years of a life lived or half over, effort, hope and an attempt, honest or dishonest, but an attempt. It had left on all a single mark in common: on lips smiling with malice, on lips loose with renunciation, on lips tight with uncertain dignity — on all — the mark of suffering.

" ... In this day and age, when the world is torn by gigantic problems, seeking an answer to questions that hold the survival of man in the balance — this man attached to such a vague intangible, such an unessential as his artistic opinions sufficient importance to let it become his sole passion and the motivation of a crime against society."

The people had come to witness a sensational case, to see celebrities, to get material for conversation, to be seen, to kill time. They would return to unwanted jobs, unloved families, unchosen friends, to drawing rooms, evening clothes, cocktail glasses and movies, to unadmitted pain, murdered hope, desire left unreached, left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken, to days of effort not to think, not to say, to forget and give in and give up. But each of them had known some unforgotten moment — a morning when nothing had happened, a piece of music heard suddenly and never heard in the same way again, a stranger's face seen in a bus — a moment when each had known a different sense of living. And each remembered other moments, on a sleepless night, on an afternoon of steady rain, in a church, in an empty street at sunset, when each had wondered why there was so much suffering and ugliness in the world. They had not tried to find the answer and they had gone on living as if no answer were necessary. But each had known a moment when, in lonely, naked honesty, he had felt the need of an answer.

" ... a ruthless, arrogant egotist who wished to have his own way at any price ... "

Twelve men sat in the jury box. They listened, their faces attentive and emotionless. People had whispered that it was a tough-looking jury. There were two executives of industrial concerns, two engineers, a mathematician, a truck driver, a bricklayer, an electrician, a gardener and three factory workers. The impaneling of the jury had taken some time. Roark had challenged many talesmen. He had picked these twelve. The prosecutor had agreed, telling himself that this was what happened when an amateur undertook to handle his own defense; a lawyer would have chosen the gentlest types, those most likely to respond to an appeal for mercy; Roark had chosen the hardest faces.

" ... Had it been some plutocrat's mansion, but a housing project, gentlemen of the jury, a housing project!"

The judge sat erect on the tall bench. He had gray hair and the stern face of an army officer.

" ... a man trained to serve society, a builder who became a destroyer ... "

The voice went on, practiced and confident. The faces filling the room listened with the response they granted to a good weekday dinner: satisfying and to be forgotten within an hour. They agreed with every sentence; they had heard it before, they had always heard it, this was what the world lived by; it was self-evident — like a puddle before one's feet.

The prosecutor introduced his witnesses. The policeman who had arrested Roark took the stand to tell how he had found the defendant standing by the electric plunger. The night watchman related how he had been sent away from the scene; his testimony was brief; the prosecutor preferred not to stress the subject of Dominique. The contractor's superintendent testified about the dynamite missing from the stores on the site. Officials of Cortlandt, building inspectors, estimators took the stand to describe the building and the extent of the damage. This concluded the first day of the trial.

Peter Keating was the first witness called on the following day.

He sat on the stand, slumped forward. He looked at the prosecutor obediently. His eyes moved, once in a while. He looked at the crowd, at the jury, at Roark. It made no difference.

"Mr. Keating, will you state under oath whether you designed the project ascribed to you, known as Cortlandt Homes?"

"No. I didn't."

"Who designed it?"

"Howard Roark."

"At whose request?"

"At my request."

"Why did you call on him?"

"Because I was not capable of doing it myself."

There was no sound of honesty in the voice, because there was no sound of effort to pronounce a truth of such nature; no tone of truth or falsehood; only indifference.

The prosecutor handed him a sheet of paper. "Is this the agreement you signed?"

Keating held the paper in his hand. "Yes."

"Is that Howard Roark's signature?"

"Yes."

"Will you please read the terms of this agreement to the jury?"

Keating read it aloud. His voice came evenly, well drilled. Nobody in the courtroom realized that this testimony had been intended as a sensation. It was not a famous architect publicly confessing incompetence; it was a man reciting a memorized lesson. People felt mat were he interrupted, he would not be able to pick up the next sentence, but would have to start all over again from the beginning.

He answered a great many questions. The prosecutor introduced in evidence Roark's original drawings of Cortlandt, which Keating had kept; the copies which Keating had made of them; and photographs of Cortlandt as it had been built.

"Why did you object so strenuously to the excellent structural changes suggested by Mr. Prescott and Mr. Webb?"

"I was afraid of Howard Roark."

"What did your knowledge of his character lead you to expect?'

"Anything."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. I was afraid. I used to be afraid."

The questions went on. The story was unusual, but the audience felt bored. It did not sound like the recital of a participant. The other witnesses had seemed to have a more personal connection with the case.

When Keating left the stand, the audience had the odd impression that no change had occurred in the act of a man's exit; as if no person had walked out.

"The prosecution rests," said the District Attorney.

The judge looked at Roark.

"Proceed," he said. His voice was gentle.

Roark got up. "Your Honor, I shall call no witnesses. This will be my testimony and my summation."

"Take the oath."

Roark took the oath. He stood by the steps of the witness stand. The audience looked at him. They felt he had no chance. They could drop the nameless resentment, the sense of insecurity which he aroused in most people. And so, for the first time, they could see him as he was: a man totally innocent of fear.

The fear of which they thought was not the normal kind, not a response to a tangible danger, but the chronic, unconfessed fear in which they all lived. They remembered the misery of the moments when, in loneliness, a man thinks of the bright words he could have said, but had not found, and hates those who robbed him of his courage. The misery of knowing how strong and able one is in one's own mind, the radiant picture never to be made real. Dreams? Self-delusion? Or a murdered reality, unborn, killed by that corroding emotion without name — fear — need — dependence — hatred?

Roark stood before them as each man stands in the innocence of his own mind. But Roark stood like that before a hostile crowd — and they knew suddenly that no hatred was possible to him. For the flash of an instant, they grasped the manner of his consciousness. Each asked himself: do I need anyone's approval? — does it matter? — am I tied? And for that instant, each man was free — free enough to feel benevolence for every other man in the room.

It was only a moment; the moment of silence when Roark was about to speak.

"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness off the earth. Centuries later, the first man invented the wheel. He was probably torn on the rack he had taught his brothers to build. He was considered a transgressor who ventured into forbidden territory. But thereafter, men could travel past any horizon. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had opened the roads of the world.

"That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures — because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer — because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage.

"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.

"No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the slothful routine of their lives. His truth was his only motive. His own truth, and his own work to achieve it in his own way. A symphony, a book, an engine, a philosophy, an airplane or a building — that was his goal and his life. Not those who heard, read, operated, believed, flew or inhabited the thing he had created. The creation, not its users. The creation, not the benefits others derived from it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men.

"His vision, his strength, his courage came from his own spirit. A man's spirit, however, is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.

"The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power — that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He had lived for himself.

"And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.

"Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons — a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man — the function of his reasoning mind.

"But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act — the process of reason — must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.

"We inherit the products of the thought of other men. We inherit the wheel. We make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile. The automobile becomes an airplane. But all through the process what we receive from others is only the end product of their thinking. The moving force is the creative faculty which takes this product as material, uses it and originates the next step. This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It belongs to single, individual men. That which it creates is the property of the creator. Men learn from one another. But all learning is only the exchange of material. No man can give another the capacity to think. Yet that capacity is our only means of survival.

"Nothing is given to man on earth. Everything he needs has to be produced. And here man faces his basic alternative: he can survive in only one of two ways — by the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces nature alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary.

"The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men.

"The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself. The parasite lives second-hand. He needs others. Others become his prime motive.

"The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary.

"The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order to serve others. He preaches altruism.

"Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self.

"No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.

"The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality — the man who lives to serve others — is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit? The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has the merit of having resisted and of considering his condition evil. But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man and he degrades the conception of love. But this is the essence of altruism.

"Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution — or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.

"Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. But suffering is a disease. Should one come upon it, one tries to give relief and assistance. To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer — in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism. The creator is not concerned with disease, but with life. Yet the work of the creators has eliminated one form of disease after another, in man's body and spirit, and brought more relief from suffering than any altruist could ever conceive.

"Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

"Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge, or act. These are functions of the self.

"Here the basic reversal is most deadly. The issue has been perverted and man has been left no alternative — and no freedom. As poles of good and evil, he was offered two conceptions: egotism and altruism. Egotism was held to mean the sacrifice of others to self. Altruism — the sacrifice of self to others. This tied man irrevocably to other men and left him nothing but a choice of pain: his own pain borne for the sake of others or pain inflicted upon others for the sake of self. When it was added that man must find joy in self-immolation, the trap was closed. Man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal — under the threat that sadism was his only alternative. This was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind.

"This was the device by which dependence and suffering were perpetuated as fundamentals of life.

"The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence. The code of the creator or the code of the second-hander. This is the basic issue. It rests upon the alternative of life or death. The code of the creator is built on the needs of the reasoning mind which allows man to survive. The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival. All that which proceeds from man's independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man's dependence upon men is evil.

"The egotist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter. Not in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thinking, not in his desires, not in the source of his energy. He does not exist for any other man — and he asks no other man to exist for him. This is the only form of brotherhood and mutual respect possible between men.

"Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence.

"In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone. An architect needs clients, but he does not subordinate his work to their wishes. They need him, but they do not order a house just to give him a commission. Men exchange their work by free, mutual consent to mutual advantage when their personal interests agree and they both desire the exchange. If they do not desire it, they are not forced to deal with each other. They seek further. This is the only possible form of relationship between equals. Anything else is a relation of slave to master, or victim to executioner.

"No work is ever done collectively, by a majority decision. Every creative job is achieved under the guidance of a single individual thought. An architect requires a great many men to erect his building. But he does not ask them to vote on his design. They work together by free agreement and each is free in his proper function. An architect uses steel, glass, concrete, produced by others. But the materials remain just so much steel, glass and concrete until he touches them. What he does with them is his individual product and his individual property. This is the only pattern for proper co-operation among men.

"The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men. This includes the whole sphere of his creative faculty, his thinking, his work. But it does not include the sphere of the gangster, the altruist and the dictator.

"A man thinks and works alone. A man cannot rob, exploit or rule — alone. Robbery, exploitation and ruling presuppose victims. They imply dependence. They are the province of the second-hander.

"Rulers of men are not egotists. They create nothing. They exist entirely through the persons of others. Their goal is in their subjects, in the activity of enslaving. They are as dependent as the beggar, the social worker and the bandit. The form of dependence does not matter.

"But men were taught to regard second-handers — tyrants, emperors, dictators — as exponents of egotism. By this fraud they were made to destroy the ego, themselves and others. The purpose of the fraud was to destroy the creators. Or to harness them. Which is a synonym.

"From the beginning of history, the two antagonists have stood face to face: the creator and the second-hander. When the first creator invented the wheel, the first second-hander responded. He invented altruism.

"The creator — denied, opposed, persecuted, exploited — went on, moved forward and carried all humanity along on his energy. The second-hander contributed nothing to the process except the impediments. The contest has another name: the individual against the collective.

"The 'common good' of a collective — a race, a class, a state — was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men's hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. They believed in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. Actors change, but the course of the tragedy remains the same. A humanitarian who starts with declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing for themselves. But observe the results.

"The only good which men can do to one another and the only statement of their proper relationship is — Hands off!

"Now observe the results of a society built on the principle of individualism. This, our country. The noblest country in the history of men. The country of greatest achievement, greatest prosperity, greatest freedom. This country was not based on selfless service, sacrifice, renunciation or any precept of altruism. It was based on a man's right to the pursuit of happiness. His own happiness. Not anyone else's. A private, personal, selfish motive. Look at the results. Look into your own conscience.

"It is an ancient conflict. Men have come close to the truth, but it was destroyed each time and one civilization fell after another. Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

"Now, in our age, collectivism, the rule of the second-hander and second-rater, the ancient monster, has broken loose and is running amuck. It has brought men to a level of intellectual indecency never equaled on earth. It has reached a scale of horror without precedent. It has poisoned every mind. It has swallowed most of Europe. It is engulfing our country.

"I am an architect. I know what is to come by the principle on which it is built. We are approaching a world in which I cannot permit myself to live.

"Now you know why I dynamited Cortlandt.

"I designed Cortlandt. I gave it to you. I destroyed it.

"I destroyed it because I did not choose to let it exist. It was a double monster. In form and in implication. I had to blast both. The form was mutilated by two second-handers who assumed the right to improve upon that which they had not made and could not equal. They were permitted to do it by the general implication that the altruistic purpose of the building superseded all rights and that I had no claim to stand against it.

"I agreed to design Cortlandt for the purpose of seeing it erected as I designed it and for no other reason. That was the price I set for my work. I was not paid.

"I do not blame Peter Keating. He was helpless. He had a contract with his employers. It was ignored. He had a promise that the structure he offered would be built as designed. The promise was broken. The love of a man for the integrity of his work and his right to preserve it are now considered a vague intangible and an unessential. You have heard the prosecutor say that. Why was the building disfigured? For no reason. Such acts never have any reason, unless it's the vanity of some second-handers who feel they have a right to anyone's property, spiritual or material. Who permitted them to do it? No particular man among the dozens in authority. No one cared to permit it or to stop it. No one was responsible. No one can be held to account. Such is the nature of all collective action.

"I did not receive the payment I asked. But the owners of Cortlandt got what they needed from me. They wanted a scheme devised to build a structure as cheaply as possible. They found no one else who could do it to their satisfaction. I could and did. They took the benefit of my work and made me contribute it as a gift. But I am not an altruist. I do not contribute gifts of this nature.

"It is said that I have destroyed the home of the destitute. It is forgotten that but for me the destitute could not have had this particular home. Those who were concerned with the poor had to come to me, who have never been concerned, in order to help the poor. It is believed that the poverty of the future tenants gave them a right to my work. That their need constituted a claim on my life. That it was my duty to contribute anything demanded of me. This is the second-hander's credo now swallowing the world.

"I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.

"I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others.

"It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

"I wished to come here and say that the integrity of a man's creative work is of greater importance than any charitable endeavor. Those of you who do not understand this are the men who're destroying the world.

"I wished to come here and state my terms. I do not care to exist on any others.

"I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society. To my country, I wish to give the ten years which I will spend in jail if my country exists no longer. I will spend them in memory and in gratitude for what my country has been. It will be my act of loyalty, my refusal to live or work in what has taken its place.

"My act of loyalty to every creator who ever lived and was made to suffer by the force responsible for the Cortlandt I dynamited. To every tortured hour of loneliness, denial, frustration, abuse he was made to spend — and to the battles he won. To every creator whose name is known — and to every creator who lived, struggled and perished unrecognized before he could achieve. To every creator who was destroyed in body or in spirit. To Henry Cameron. To Steven Mallory. To a man who doesn't want to be named, but who is sitting in this courtroom and knows that I am speaking of him."

Roark stood, his legs apart, his arms straight at his sides, his head lifted — as he stood in an unfinished building. Later, when he was seated again at the defense table, many men in the room felt as if they still saw him standing; one moment's picture that would not be replaced.

The picture remained in their minds through the long legal discussions that followed. They heard the judge state to the prosecutor that the defendant had, in effect, changed his plea: he had admitted his act, but had not pleaded guilty of the crime; an issue of temporary legal insanity was raised; it was up to the jury to decide whether the defendant knew the nature and quality of his act, or, if he did, whether he knew that the act was wrong. The prosecutor raised no objection; there was an odd silence in the room; he felt certain that he had won his case already. He made his closing address. No one remembered what he said. The judge gave his instructions to the jury. The jury rose and left the courtroom.

People moved, preparing to depart, without haste, in expectation of many hours of waiting. Wynand, at the back of the room, and Dominique, in the front, sat without moving.

A bailiff stepped to Roark's side to escort him out Roark stood by the defense table. His eyes went to Dominique, then to Wynand. He turned and followed the bailiff.

He had reached the door when there was a sharp crack of sound, and a space of blank silence before people realized that it was a knock at the closed door of the jury room. The jury had reached a verdict.

Those who had been on their feet remained standing, frozen, until the judge returned to the bench. The jury filed into the courtroom.

"The prisoner will rise and face the jury," said the clerk of the court.

Howard Roark stepped forward and stood facing the jury. At the back of the room, Gail Wynand got up and stood also.

"Mr. Foreman, have you reached a verdict?"

"We have."

"What is your verdict?"

"Not guilty."

The first movement of Roark's head was not to look at the city in the window, at the judge or at Dominique. He looked at Wynand.

Wynand turned sharply and walked out. He was the first man to leave the courtroom.

19.

ROGER ENRIGHT bought the site, the plans and the ruins of Cortlandt from the government. He ordered every twisted remnant of foundations dug out to leave a clean hole in the earth. He hired Howard Roark to rebuild the project. Placing a single contractor in charge, observing the strict economy of the plans, Enright budgeted the undertaking to set low rentals with a comfortable margin of profit for himself. No questions were to be asked about the income, occupation, children or diet of the future tenants; the project was open to anyone who wished to move in and pay the rent, whether he could afford a more expensive apartment elsewhere or not.

Late in August Gail Wynand was granted his divorce. The suit was not contested and Dominique was not present at the brief hearing. Wynand stood like a man facing a court-martial and heard the cold obscenity of legal language describing the breakfast in a house of Monadnock Valley — Mrs. Gail Wynand — Howard Roark; branding his wife as officially dishonored, granting him lawful sympathy, the status of injured innocence, and a paper that was his passport to freedom for all the years before him, and for all the silent evenings of those years.

Ellsworth Toohey won his case before the labor board. Wynand was ordered to reinstate him in his job.

That afternoon Wynand's secretary telephoned Toohey and told him that Mr. Wynand expected him back at work tonight, before nine o'clock. Toohey smiled, dropping the receiver.

Toohey smiled, entering the Banner Building that evening. He stopped in the city room. He waved to people, shook hands, made witty remarks about some current movies, and bore an air of guileless astonishment, as if he had been absent just since yesterday and could not understand why people greeted him in the manner of a triumphal homecoming.

Then he ambled on to his office. He stopped short. He knew, while stopping, that he must enter, must not show the jolt, and that he had shown it: Wynand stood in the open door of his office.

"Good evening, Mr. Toohey," said Wynand softly. "Come in."

"Hello, Mr. Wynand," said Toohey, his voice pleasant, reassured by feeling his face muscles manage a smile and his legs walking on.

He entered and stopped uncertainly. It was his own office, unchanged, with his typewriter and a stack of fresh paper on the desk. But the door remained open and Wynand stood there silently, leaning against the jamb.

"Sit down at your desk, Mr. Toohey. Go to work. We must comply with the law."

Toohey gave a gay little shrug of acquiescence, crossed the room and sat down. He put his hands on the desk surface, palms spread solidly, then dropped them to his lap. He reached for a pencil, examined its point and dropped it

Wynand lifted one wrist slowly to the level of his chest and held it still, the apex of a triangle made by his forearm and the long, drooping fingers of his hand; he was looking down at his wrist watch. He said:

"It is ten minutes to nine. You are back on your job, Mr. Toohey."

"And I'm happy as a kid to be back. Honestly, Mr. Wynand, I suppose I shouldn't confess it, but I missed this place like all hell."

Wynand made no movement to go. He stood, slouched as usual, his shoulder blades propped against the doorjamb, arms crossed on his chest, hands holding his elbows. A lamp with a square shade of green glass burned on the desk, but there was still daylight outside, streaks of tired brown on a lemon sky; the room held a dismal sense of evening in the illumination that seemed both premature and too feeble. The light made a puddle on the desk, but it could not shut out the brown, half-dissolved shapes of the street, and it could not reach the door to disarm Wynand's presence.

The lamp shade rattled faintly and Toohey felt the nimble under his shoe soles: the presses were rolling. He realized that he had heard them for some time. It was a comforting sound, dependable and alive. The pulse beat of a newspaper — the newspaper that transmits to men the pulse beat of the world. A long, even flow of separate drops, like marbles rolling away in a straight line, like the sound of a man's heart.

Toohey moved a pencil over a sheet of paper, until he realized that the sheet lay in the lamplight and Wynand could see the pencil making a water lily, a teapot and a bearded profile. He dropped the pencil and made a self-mocking sound with his lips. He opened a drawer and looked attentively at a pile of carbons and paper clips. He did not know what he could possibly be expected to do: one did not start writing a column just like that. He had wondered why he should be asked to resume his duties at nine o'clock in the evening, but he had supposed that it was Wynand's manner of softening surrender by overdoing it, and he had felt he could afford not to argue the point.

The presses were rolling; a man's heartbeats gathered and re-broadcast. He heard no other sound and he thought it was absurd to keep this up if Wynand had gone, but most inadvisable to look in his direction if he hadn't.

After a while he looked up. Wynand was still there. The light picked out two white spots of his figure: the long fingers of one hand closed over an elbow, and the high forehead. It was the forehead that Toohey wanted to see; no, there were no slanting ridges over the eyebrows. The eyes made two solid white ovals, faintly discernible in the angular shadows of the face. The ovals were directed at Toohey. But there was nothing in the face; no indication of purpose.

After a while, Toohey said:

"Really, Mr. Wynand, there's no reason why you and I can't get together."

Wynand did not answer.

Toohey picked up a sheet of paper and inserted it in the typewriter. He sat looking at the keys, holding his chin between two fingers, in the pose he knew he assumed when preparing to attack a paragraph. The rims of the keys glittered under the lamps, rings of bright nickel suspended in the dim room.

The presses stopped.

Toohey jerked back, automatically, before he knew why he had jerked: he was a newspaperman and it was a sound that did not stop like that.

Wynand looked at his wrist watch. He said:

"It's nine o'clock. You're out of a job, Mr. Toohey. The Banner has ceased to exist."

The next incident of reality Toohey apprehended was his own hand dropping down on the typewriter keys: he heard the metal cough of the levers tangling and striking together, and the small jump of the carriage.

He did not speak, but he thought his face was naked because he heard Wynand answering him:

"Yes, you had worked here for thirteen years ... Yes, I bought them all out, Mitchell Layton included, two weeks ago ... " The voice was indifferent. "No, the boys in the city room didn't know it. Only the boys in the pressroom ... "

Toohey turned away. He picked up a paper clip, held it on his palm, then turned his hand over and let the clip fall, observing with mild astonishment the finality of the law mat had not permitted it to remain on his downturned palm.

He got up. He stood looking at Wynand, a stretch of gray carpet between them.

Wynand's head moved, leaned slightly to one shoulder. Wynand's face looked as if no barrier were necessary now, it looked simple, it held no anger, the closed lips were drawn in the hint of a smile of pain that was almost humble.

Wynand said:

"This was the end of the Banner ... I think it's proper that I should meet it with you."

Many newspapers bid for the services of Ellsworth Monkton Toohey. He selected the Courier, a paper of well-bred prestige and gently uncertain policy.

In the evening of his first day on the new job Ellsworth Toohey sat on the edge of an associate editor's desk and they talked about Mr. Talbot, the owner of the Courier, whom Toohey had met but a few times.

"But Mr. Talbot as a man?" asked Ellsworth Toohey. "What's his particular god? What would he go to pieces without?"

In the radio room across the hall somebody was twisting a dial. "Time," blared a solemn voice, "marches on!"

Roark sat at the drafting table in his office, working. The city beyond the glass walls seemed lustrous, the air washed by the first cold of October.

The telephone rang. He held his pencil suspended in a jerk of impatience; the telephone was never to ring when he was drawing. He walked to his desk and picked up the receiver.

"Mr. Roark," said his secretary, the tense little note in her voice serving as apology for a broken order, "Mr. Gail Wynand wishes to know whether it would be convenient for you to come to his office at four o'clock tomorrow afternoon?"

She heard the faint buzz of silence in the receiver at her ear and counted many seconds.

"Is he on the wire?" asked Roark. She knew it was not the phone connection that made his voice sound like that.

"No, Mr. Roark. It's Mr. Wynand's secretary."

"Yes. Yes. Tell her yes."

He walked to the drafting table and looked down at the sketches; it was the first desertion he had ever been forced to commit: he knew he would not be able to work today. The weight of hope and relief together was too great.

When Roark approached the door of what had been the Banner Building, he saw that the sign, the Banner's masthead, was gone. Nothing replaced it. A discolored rectangle was left over the door. He knew the building now contained the offices of the Clarion and floors of empty rooms. The Clarion, a third-rate afternoon tabloid, was the only representative of the Wynand chain in New York.

He walked to an elevator. He was glad to be the only passenger: he felt a sudden, violent possessiveness for the small cage of steel; it was his, found again, given back to him. The intensity of the relief told him the intensity of the pain it had ended; the special pain, like no other in his life.

When he entered Wynand's office, he knew that he had to accept that pain and carry it forever, mat there was to be no cure and no hope. Wynand sat behind his desk and rose when he entered, looking straight at him. Wynand's face was more than the face of a stranger: a stranger's face is an unapproached potentiality, to be opened if one makes the choice and effort; this was a face known, closed and never to be reached again. A face that held no pain of renunciation, but the stamp of the next step, when even pain is renounced. A face remote and quiet, with a dignity of its own, not a living attribute, but the dignity of a figure on a medieval tomb that speaks of past greatness and forbids a hand to reach out for the remains.

"Mr. Roark, this interview is necessary, but very difficult for me. Please act accordingly."

Roark knew that the last act of kindness he could offer was to claim no bond. He knew he would break what was left of the man before him if he pronounced one word: Gail. Roark answered: "Yes, Mr. Wynand."

Wynand picked up four typewritten sheets of paper and handed them across the desk:

"Please read this and sign it if it meets with your approval."

"What is it?"

"Your contract to design the Wynand Building." Roark put the sheets down. He could not hold them. He could not look at them.

"Please listen carefully, Mr. Roark. This must be explained and understood. I wish to undertake the construction of the Wynand Building at once. I wish it to be the tallest structure of the city. Do not discuss with me the question of whether this is timely or economically advisable. I wish it built. It will be used — which is all that concerns you. It will house the Clarion and all the offices of the Wynand Enterprises now located in various parts of the city. The rest of the space will be rented. I have sufficient standing left to guarantee that. You need have no fear of erecting a useless structure. I shall send you a written statement on all details and requirements. The rest will be up to you. You will design the building as you wish. Your decisions will be final. They will not require my approval. You will have full charge and complete authority. This is stated in the contract. But I wish it understood that I shall not have to see you. There will be an agent to represent me in all technical and financial matters. You will deal with him. You will hold all further conferences with him. Let him know what contractors you prefer chosen for the job. If you find it necessary to communicate with me, you will do it through my agent. You are not to expect or attempt to see me. Should you do so, you will be refused admittance. I do not wish to speak to you. I do not wish ever to see you again. If you are prepared to comply with these conditions, please read the contract and sign it."

Roark reached for a pen and signed without looking at the paper.

"You have not read it," said Wynand.

Roark threw the paper across the desk.

"Please sign both copies."

Roark obeyed.

"Thank you," said Wynand, signed the sheets and handed one to Roark. "This is your copy."

Roark slipped the paper into his pocket.

"I have not mentioned the financial part of the undertaking. It is an open secret that the so-called Wynand empire is dead. It is sound and doing as well as ever throughout the country, with the exception of New York City. It will last my lifetime. But it will end with me. I intend to liquidate a great part of it. You will, therefore, have no reason to limit yourself by any consideration of costs in your design of the building. You are free to make it cost whatever you find necessary. The building will remain long after the newsreels and tabloids are gone."

"Yes, Mr. Wynand."

"I presume you will want to make the structure efficiently economical in maintenance costs. But you do not have to consider the return of the original investment. There's no one to whom it must return."

"Yes, Mr. Wynand."

"If you consider the behavior of the world at present and the disaster toward which it is moving you might find the undertaking preposterous. The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave. But you are not afraid of a gesture against the whole world. This will be the last skyscraper ever built in New York. It is proper that it should be so. The last achievement of man on earth before mankind destroys itself."

"Mankind will never destroy itself, Mr. Wynand. Nor should it think of itself as destroyed. Not so long as it does things such as this."

"As what?"

"As the Wynand Building."

"That is up to you. Dead things — such as the Banner — are only the financial fertilizer that will make it possible. It is their proper function."

He picked up his copy of the contract, folded it and put it, with a precise gesture, into his inside coat pocket. He said, with no change in the tone of his voice:

"I told you once that this building was to be a monument to my life. There is nothing to commemorate now. The Wynand Building will have nothing — except what you give it."

He rose to his feet, indicating that the interview was ended. Roark got up and inclined his head in parting. He held his head down a moment longer than a formal bow required.

At the door he stopped and turned. Wynand stood behind his desk without moving. They looked at each other.

Wynand said:

"Build it as a monument to that spirit which is yours ... and could have been mine."

20.

ON A spring day, eighteen months later, Dominique walked to the construction site of the Wynand Building.

She looked at the skyscrapers of the city. They rose from unexpected spots, out of the low roof lines. They had a kind of startling suddenness, as if they had sprung up the second before she saw them and she had caught the last thrust of the motion; as if, were she to turn away and look again fast enough, she would catch them in the act of springing.

She turned a corner of Hell's Kitchen and came to the vast cleared tract.

Machines were crawling over the torn earth, grading the future park. From its center, the skeleton of the Wynand Building rose, completed, to the sky. The top part of the frame still hung naked, an intercrossed cage of steel. Glass and masonry had followed its rise, covering the rest of the long streak slashed through space.

She thought: They say the heart of the earth is made of fire. It is held imprisoned and silent. But at times it breaks through the clay, the iron, the granite, and shoots out to freedom. Then it becomes a thing like this.

She walked to the building. A wooden fence surrounded its lower stories. The fence was bright with large signs advertising the names of the firms who had supplied materials for the tallest structure in the world. "Steel by National Steel, Inc." "Glass by Ludlow." "Electrical Equipment by Wells-Clairmont." "Elevators by Kessler, Inc." "Nash & Dunning, Contractors."

She stopped. She saw an object she had never noticed before. The sight was like the touch of a hand on her forehead, the hand of those figures in legend who had the power to heal. She had not known Henry Cameron and she had not heard him say it, but what she felt now was as if she were hearing it: "And I know that if you carry these words through to the end, it will be a victory, Howard, not just for you, but for something that should win, that moves the world — and never wins acknowledgment. It will vindicate so many who have fallen before you, who have suffered as you will suffer."

She saw, on the fence surrounding New York's greatest building, a small tin plate bearing the words:

"Howard Roark, Architect"

She walked to the superintendent's shed. She had come here often to call for Roark, to watch the progress of construction. But there was a new man in the shed who did not know her. She asked for Roark.

"Mr. Roark is way up on top by the water tank. Who's calling, ma'am?"

"Mrs. Roark," she answered.

The man found the superintendent who let her ride the outside hoist, as she always did — a few planks with a rope for a railing, that rose up the side of the building.

She stood, her hand lifted and closed about a cable, her high heels poised firmly on the planks. The planks shuddered, a current of air pressed her skirt to her body, and she saw the ground dropping softly away from her.

She rose above the broad panes of shop windows. The channels of streets grew deeper, sinking. She rose above the marquees of movie theaters, black mats held by spirals of color. Office windows streamed past her, long belts of glass running down. The squat hulks of warehouses vanished, sinking with the treasures they guarded. Hotel towers slanted, like the spokes of an opening fan, and folded over. The fuming matchsticks were factory stacks and the moving gray squares were cars. The sun made lighthouses of peaked summits, they reeled, flashing long white rays over the city. The city spread out, marching in angular rows to the rivers. It stood held between two thin black arms of water. It leaped across and rolled away to a haze of plains and sky.

Flat roofs descended like pedals pressing the buildings down, out of the way of her flight. She went past the cubes of glass that held dining rooms, bedrooms and nurseries. She saw roof gardens float down like handkerchiefs spread on the wind. Skyscrapers raced her and were left behind. The planks under her feet shot past the antennae of radio stations.

The hoist swung like a pendulum above the city. It sped against the side of the building. It had passed the line where the masonry ended behind her. There was nothing behind her now but steel ligaments and space. She felt the height pressing against her eardrums. The sun filled her eyes. The air beat against her raised chin.

She saw him standing above her, on the top platform of the Wynand Building. He waved to her.

The line of the ocean cut the sky. The ocean mounted as the city descended. She passed the pinnacles of bank buildings. She passed the crowns of courthouses. She rose above the spires of churches.

Then there was only the ocean and the sky and the figure of Howard Roark.