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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?"

490

"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."

491

"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

492

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.

493

"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