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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."

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"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

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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

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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."

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"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."

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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