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betray. Mitchell Layton can be forgiven. But not I. I was not born to be a

second-hander.

17.

IT WAS a summer day, cloudless and cool, as if the sun were screened by an

invisible film of water, and the energy of heat had been transformed into a

sharper clarity, an added brilliance of outline for the buildings of the city.

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In the streets, scattered like scraps of gray foam, there were a great many

copies of the Banner. The city read, chuckling, the statement of Wynand’s

renunciation.

"That’s that," said Gus Webb, chairman of the "We Don’t Read Wynand" Committee.

"It’s slick," said Ike. "I’d like one peek, just one peek, at the great Mr. Gail

Wynand’s face today," said Sally Brent. "It’s about time," said Homer Slottern.

"Isn’t it splendid? Wynand’s surrendered," said a tight-lipped woman; she knew

little about Wynand and nothing about the issue, but she liked to hear of people

surrendering. In a kitchen, after dinner, a fat woman scraped the remnants off

the dishes onto a sheet of newspaper; she never read the front page, only the

installments of a love serial in the second section; she wrapped onion peelings

and lamb-chop bones in a copy of the Banner.

"It’s stupendous," said Lancelot Clokey, "only I’m really sore at that Union,

Ellsworth. How could they double-cross you like that?"

"Don’t be a sap, Lance," said Ellsworth Toohey. "What do you mean?"

"I told them to accept the terms."

"You did?"

"Yep."

"But Jesus! ’One Small Voice’..."

"You can wait for ’One Small Voice’ another month or so, can’t you? I’ve filed

suit with the labor board today, to be reinstated in my job on the Banner. There

are more ways than one to skin a cat, Lance. The skinning isn’t important once

you’ve broken its spine."

That evening Roark pressed the bell button at the door of Wynand’s penthouse.

The butler opened the door and said: "Mr. Wynand cannot see you, Mr. Roark."

From the sidewalk across the street Roark looked up and saw a square of light

high over the roofs, in the window of Wynand’s study.

In the morning Roark came to Wynand’s office in the Banner Building. Wynand’s

secretary told him: "Mr. Wynand cannot see you, Mr. Roark." She added, her voice

polite, disciplined: "Mr. Wynand has asked me to tell you that he does not wish

ever to see you again."

Roark wrote him a long letter: "...Gail, I know. I hoped you could escape it,

but since it had to happen, start again from where you are. I know what you’re

doing to yourself. You’re not doing it for my sake, it’s not up to me, but if

this will help you I want to say that I’m repeating, now, everything I’ve ever

said to you. Nothing has changed for me. You’re still what you were. I’m not

saying that I forgive you, because there can be no such question between us. But

if you can’t forgive yourself, will you let me do it? Let me say that it doesn’t

matter, it’s not the final verdict on you. Give me the right to let you forget

it. Go on just on my faith until you’ve recovered. I know it’s something no man

can do for another, but if I am what I’ve been to you, you’ll accept it. Call it

a blood transfusion. You need it. Take it. It’s harder than fighting that

strike. Do it for my sake, if that will help you. But do it. Come back. There

will be another chance. What you think you’ve lost can neither be lost nor

found. Don’t let it go."

The letter came back to Roark, unopened.

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Alvah Scarret ran the Banner. Wynand sat in his office. He had removed Roark’s

picture from the wall. He attended to advertising contracts, expenses, accounts.

Scarret took care of the editorial policy. Wynand did not read the contents of

the Banner.

When Wynand appeared in any department of the building, the employees obeyed him

as they had obeyed him before. He was still a machine and they knew that it was

a machine more dangerous than ever: a car running downhill, without combustion

or brakes.

He slept in his penthouse. He had not seen Dominique. Scarret had told him that

she had gone back to the country. Once Wynand ordered his secretary to telephone

Connecticut. He stood by her desk while she asked the butler whether Mrs. Wynand

was there. The butler answered that she was. The secretary hung up and Wynand

went back to his office.

He thought he would give himself a few days. Then he’d return to Dominique.

Their marriage would be what she had wanted it to be at first--"Mrs.

Wynand-Papers." He would accept it.

Wait, he thought in an agony of impatience, wait. You must learn to face her as

you are now. Train yourself to be a beggar. There must be no pretense at things

to which you have no right. No equality, no resistance, no pride in holding your

strength against hers. Only acceptance now. Stand before her as a man who can

give her nothing, who will live on what she chooses to grant him. It will be

contempt, but it will come from her and it will be a bond. Show her that you

recognize this. There is a kind of dignity in a renunciation of dignity openly

admitted. Learn it. Wait....He sat in the study of his penthouse, his head on

the arm of his chair. There were no witnesses in the empty rooms around

him....Dominique, he thought, I will have no claim to make except that I need

you so much. And that I love you. I told you once not to consider it. Now I’ll

use it as a tin cup. But I’ll use it. I love you....

Dominique lay stretched out on the shore of the lake. She looked at the house on

the hill, at the tree branches above her. Flat on her back, hands crossed under

her head, she studied the motion of leaves against the sky. It was an earnest

occupation, giving her full contentment. She thought, it’s a lovely kind of

green, there’s a difference between the color of plants and the color of

objects, this has light in it, this is not just green, but also the living force

of the tree made visible, I don’t have to look down, I can see the branches, the

trunk, the roots just by looking at that color. That fire around the edges is

the sun, I don’t have to see it, I can tell what the whole countryside looks

like today. The spots of light weaving in circles--that’s the lake, the special

kind of light that comes refracted from water, the lake is beautiful today, and

it’s better not to see it, just to guess by these spots. I have never been able

to enjoy it before, the sight of the earth, it’s such great background, but it

has no meaning except as a background, and I thought of those who owned it and

then it hurt me too much. I can love it now. They don’t own it. They own

nothing. They’ve never won. I have seen the life of Gail Wynand, and now I know.

One cannot hate the earth in their name. The earth is beautiful. And it is a

background, but not theirs.

She knew what she had to do. But she would give herself a few days. She thought,

I’ve learned to bear anything except happiness. I must learn how to carry it.

How not to break under it. It’s the only discipline I’ll need from now on.

#

Roark stood at the window of his house in Monadnock Valley. He had rented the

house for the summer; he went there when he wanted loneliness and rest. It was a

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quiet evening. The window opened on a small ledge in a frame of trees, hanging

against the sky. A strip of sunset light stretched above the dark treetops. He

knew that there were houses below, but they could not be seen. He was as

grateful as any other tenant for the way in which he had built this place.

He heard the sound of a car approaching up the road at the other side. He

listened, astonished. He expected no guests. The car stopped. He walked to open

the door. He felt no astonishment when he saw Dominique.

She came in as if she had left this house half an hour ago. She wore no hat, no

stockings, just sandals and a dress intended for back country roads, a narrow

sheath of dark blue linen with short sleeves, like a smock for gardening. She

did not look as if she had driven across three states, but as if she were

returning from a walk down the hill. He knew that this was to be the solemnity

of the moment--that it needed no solemnity; it was not to be stressed and set

apart, it was not this particular evening, but the completed meaning of seven

years behind them.

"Howard."

He stood as if he were looking at the sound of his name in the room. He had all

he had wanted.

But there was one thought that remained as pain, even now. He said:

"Dominique, wait till he recovers."

"You know he won’t recover."

"Have a little pity on him."

"Don’t speak their language."

"He had no choice."

"He could have closed the paper."

"It was his life."

"This is mine."

He did not know that Wynand had once said all love is exception-making; and

Wynand would not know that Roark had loved him enough to make his greatest

exception, one moment when he had tried to compromise. Then he knew it was

useless, like all sacrifices. What he said was his signature under her decision:

"I love you."

She looked about the room, to let the ordinary reality of walls and chairs help

her keep the discipline she had been learning for this moment. The walls he had

designed, the chairs he used, a package of his cigarettes on a table, the

routine necessities of life that could acquire splendor when life became what it

was now.

"Howard, I know what you intend to do at the trial. So it won’t make any

difference if they learn the truth about us."

"It won’t make any difference."

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"When you came that night and told me about Cortlandt, I didn’t try to stop you.

I knew you had to do it, it was your time to set the terms on which you could go

on. This is my time. My Cortlandt explosion. You must let me do it my way. Don’t

question me. Don’t protect me. No matter what I do."

"I know what you’ll do."

"You know that I have to?"

"Yes."

She bent one arm from the elbow, fingers lifted, in a short, backward jolt, as

if tossing the subject over her shoulder. It was settled and not to be

discussed.

She turned away from him, she walked across the room, to let the casual ease of

her steps make this her home, to state that his presence was to be the rule for

ail her coming days and she had no need to do what she wanted most at this

moment: stand and look at him. She knew also what she was delaying, because she

was not ready and would never be ready. She stretched her hand out for his

package of cigarettes on the table.

His fingers closed over her wrist and he pulled her hand back. He pulled her

around to face him, and then he held her and his mouth was on hers. She knew

that every moment of seven years when she had wanted this and stopped the pain

and thought she had won, was not past, had never been stopped, had lived on,

stored, adding hunger to hunger, and now she had to feel it all, the touch of

his body, the answer and the waiting together.

She didn’t know whether her discipline had helped; not too well, she thought,

because she saw that he had lifted her in his arms, carried her to a chair and

sat down, holding her on his knees; he laughed without sound, as he would have

laughed at a child, but the firmness of his hands holding her showed concern and

a kind of steadying caution. Then it seemed simple, she had nothing to hide from

him, she whispered: "Yes, Howard...that much..." and he said: "It was very hard

for me--all these years." And the years were ended.

She slipped down, to sit on the floor, her elbows propped on his knees, she

looked up at him and smiled, she knew that she could not have reached this white

serenity except as the sum of all the colors, of all the violence she had known.

"Howard...willingly, completely, and always...without reservations, without fear

of anything they can do to you or me...in any way you wish...as your wife or

your mistress, secretly or openly...here, or in a furnished room I’ll take in

some town near a jail where I’ll see you through a wire net...it won’t

matter....Howard, if you win the trial--even that won’t matter too much. You’ve

won long ago....I’ll remain what I am, and I’ll remain with you--now and

ever--in any way you want...."

He held her hands in his, she saw his shoulders sagging down to her, she saw him

helpless, surrendered to this moment, as she was--and she knew that even pain

can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the

witness, yet they could let each other see it without need of protection. It was

growing dark, the room was indistinguishable, only the window remained and his

shoulders against the sky in the window.

She awakened with the sun in her eyes. She lay on her back, looking at the

ceiling as she had looked at the leaves. Not to move, to guess by hints, to see

everything through the greater intensity of implication. The broken triangles of

light on the angular modeling of the ceiling’s plastic tiles meant that it was

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morning and that this was a bedroom at Monadnock, the geometry of fire and

structure above her designed by him. The fire was white--that meant it was very

early and the rays came through clean country air, with nothing anywhere in

space between this bedroom and the sun. The weight of the blanket, heavy and

intimate on her naked body, was everything that had been last night. And the

skin she felt against her arm was Roark asleep beside her.

She slipped out of bed. She stood at the window, her arms raised, holding on to

the frame at each side. She thought if she looked back she would see no shadow

of her body on the floor, she felt as if the sunlight went straight through her,

because her body had no weight.

But she had to hurry before he awakened. She found his pyjamas in a dresser