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"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.

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"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

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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

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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."

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"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?"

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"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."

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#

Keating came to Roark’s house on the following evening. He could not say whether