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"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..."

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"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

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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

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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.

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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

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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