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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.