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that I am not in the habit of asking for the esthetic opinions of my draftsmen.

You will kindly take this photograph--and I do not wish any building as Cameron

might have designed it, I wish the scheme of this adapted to our site--and you

will follow my instructions as to the Classic treatment of the facade."

"I can’t do it," said Roark, very quietly. "What? Are you speaking to me? Are

you actually saying: ’Sorry, I can’t do it’?"

"I haven’t said ’sorry,’ Mr. Francon."

"What did you say?"

"That I can’t do it."

"Why?"

"You don’t want to know why. Don’t ask me to do any designing. I’ll do any other

kind of job you wish. But not that. And not to Cameron’s work."

"What do you mean, no designing? You expect to be an architect some day--or do

you?"

"Not like this."

"Oh...I see...So you can’t do it? You mean you won’t?"

"If you prefer."

"Listen, you impertinent fool, this is incredible!" Roark got up. "May I go, Mr.

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Francon?"

"In all my life," roared Francon, "in all my experience, I’ve never seen

anything like it! Are you here to tell me what you’ll do and what you won’t do?

Are you here to give me lessons and criticize my taste and pass judgment?"

"I’m not criticizing anything," said Roark quietly. "I’m not passing judgment.

There are some things that I can’t do. Let it go at that. May I leave now?"

"You may leave this room and this firm now and from now on! You may go straight

to the devil! Go and find yourself another employer! Try and find him! Go get

your check and get out!"

"Yes, Mr. Francon."

That evening Roark walked to the basement speak-easy where he could always find

Mike after the day’s work. Mike was now employed on the construction of a

factory by the same contractor who was awarded most of Francon’s biggest jobs.

Mike had expected to see Roark on an inspection visit to the factory that

afternoon, and greeted him angrily:

"What’s the matter, Red? Lying down on the job?"

When he heard the news, Mike sat still and looked like a bulldog baring its

teeth. Then he swore savagely.

"The bastards," he gulped between stronger names, "the bastards..."

"Keep still, Mike."

"Well...what now, Red?"

"Someone else of the same kind, until the same thing happens again."

#

When Keating returned from Washington he went straight up to Francon’s office.

He had not stopped in the drafting room and had heard no news. Francon greeted

him expansively:

"Boy, it’s great to see you back! What’ll you have? A whisky-and-soda or a

little brandy?"

"No, thanks. Just give me a cigarette."

"Here....Boy, you look fine! Better than ever. How do you do it, you lucky

bastard? I have so many things to tell you! How did it go down in Washington?

Everything all right?" And before Keating could answer, Francon rushed on:

"Something dreadful’s happened to me. Most disappointing. Do you remember Lili

Landau? I thought I was all set with her, but last time I saw her, did I get the

cold shoulder! Do you know who’s got her? You’ll be surprised. Gail Wynand, no

less! The girl’s flying high. You should see her pictures and her legs all over

his newspapers. Will it help her show or won’t it! What can I offer against

that? And do you know what he’s done? Remember how she always said that nobody

could give her what she wanted most--her childhood home, the dear little

Austrian village where she was born? Well, Wynand bought it, long ago, the whole

damn village, and had it shipped here--every bit of it!--and had it assembled

again down on the Hudson, and there it stands now, cobbles, church, apple trees,

pigsties and all! Then he springs it on Lili, two weeks ago. Wouldn’t you just

know it? If the King of Babylon could get hanging gardens for his homesick lady,

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why not Gail Wynand? Lili’s all smiles and gratitude--but the poor girl was

really miserable. She’d have much preferred a mink coat. She never wanted the

damn village. And Wynand knew it, too. But there it stands, on the Hudson. Last

week, he gave a party for her, right there, in that village--a costume party,

with Mr. Wynand dressed as Cesare Borgia--wouldn’t he, though?--and what a

party!--if you can believe what you hear, but you know how it is, you can never

prove anything on Wynand. Then what does he do the next day but pose up there

himself with little schoolchildren who’d never seen an Austrian village--the

philanthropist!--and plasters the photos all over his papers with plenty of sob

stuff about educational values, and gets mush notes from women’s clubs! I’d like

to know what he’ll do with the village when he gets rid of Lili! He will, you

know, they never last long with him. Do you think I’ll have a chance with her

then?"

"Sure," said Keating. "Sure, you will. How’s everything here in the office?"

"Oh, fine. Same as usual. Lucius had a cold and drank up all of my best Bas

Armagnac. It’s bad for his heart, and a hundred dollars a case!...Besides,

Lucius got himself caught in a nasty little mess. It’s that phobia of his, his

damn porcelain. Seems he went and bought a teapot from a fence. He knew it was

stolen goods, too. Took me quite a bit of bother to save us from a

scandal....Oh, by the way, I fired that friend of yours, what’s his

name?--Roark."

"Oh," said Keating, and let a moment pass, then asked:

"Why?"

"The insolent bastard! Where did you ever pick him up?"

"What happened?"

"I thought I’d be nice to him, give him a real break. I asked him to make a

sketch for the Farrell Building--you know, the one Brent finally managed to

design and we got Farrell to accept, you know, the simplified Doric--and your

friend just up and refused to do it. It seems he has ideals or something. So I

showed him the gate....What’s the matter? What are you smiling at?"

"Nothing. I can just see it."

"Now don’t you ask me to take him back!"

"No, of course not."

For several days, Keating thought that he should call on Roark. He did not know

what he would say, but felt dimly that he should say something. He kept

postponing it. He was gaining assurance in his work. He felt that he did not

need Roark, after all. The days went by, and he did not call on Roark, and he

felt relief in being free to forget him.

Beyond the windows of his room Roark saw the roofs, the water tanks, the

chimneys, the cars speeding far below. There was a threat in the silence of his

room, in the empty days, in his hands hanging idly by his sides. And he felt

another threat rising from the city below, as if each window, each strip of

pavement, had set itself closed grimly, in wordless resistance. It did not

disturb him. He had known and accepted it long ago.

He made a list of the architects whose work he resented least, in the order of

their lesser evil, and he set out upon the search for a job, coldly,

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systematically, without anger or hope. He never knew whether these days hurt

him; he knew only that it was a thing which had to be done.

The architects he saw differed from one another. Some looked at him across the

desk, kindly and vaguely, and their manner seemed to say that it was touching,

his ambition to be an architect, touching and laudable and strange and

attractively sad as all the delusions of youth. Some smiled at him with thin,

drawn lips and seemed to enjoy his presence in the room, because it made them

conscious of their own accomplishment. Some spoke coldly, as if his ambition

were a personal insult. Some were brusque, and the sharpness of their voices

seemed to say that they needed good draftsmen, they always needed good

draftsmen, but this qualification could not possibly apply to him, and would he

please refrain from being rude enough to force them to express it more plainly.

It was not malice. It was not a judgment passed upon his merit. They did not

think he was worthless. They simply did not care to find out whether he was

good. Sometimes, he was asked to show his sketches; he extended them across a

desk, feeling a contraction of shame in the muscles of his hand; it was like

having the clothes torn off his body, and the shame was not, that his body was

exposed, but that it was exposed to indifferent eyes. Once in a while he made a

trip to New Jersey, to see Cameron. They sat together on the porch of a house on

a hill, Cameron in a wheel chair, his hands on an old blanket spread over his

knees. "How is it, Howard? Pretty hard?"

"No."

"Want me to give you a letter to one of the bastards?"

"No."

Then Cameron would not speak of it any more, he did not want to speak of it, he

did not want the thought of Roark rejected by their city to become real. When

Roark came to him, Cameron spoke of architecture with the simple confidence of a

private possession. They sat together, looking at he city in the distance, on

the edge of the sky, beyond the river. The sky was growing dark and luminous as

blue-green glass; the buildings looked like clouds condensed on the glass,

gray-blue clouds frozen for an instant in straight angles and vertical shafts,

with the sunset caught in the spires....

As the summer months passed, as his list was exhausted and he returned again to

the places that had refused him once, Roark found that a few things were known

about him and he heard the same words--spoken bluntly or timidly or angrily or

apologetically--"You were kicked out of Stanton. You were kicked out of

Francon’s office." All the different voices saying it had one note in common: a

note of relief in the certainty that the decision had been made for them.

He sat on the window sill, in the evening, smoking, his hand spread on the pane,

the city under his fingers, the glass cold against his skin.

In September, he read an article entitled "Make Way For Tomorrow" by Gordon L.

Prescott, A.G.A. in the Architectural Tribune. The article stated that the

tragedy of the profession was the hardships placed in the way of its talented

beginners; that great gifts had been lost in the struggle, unnoticed; that

architecture was perishing from a lack of new blood and new thought, a lack of

originality, vision and courage; that the author of the article made it his aim

to search for promising beginners, to encourage them, develop them and give them

the chance they deserved. Roark had never heard of Gordon L. Prescott, but there

was a tone of honest conviction in the article. He allowed himself to start for

Prescott’s office with the first hint of hope.

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The reception room of Gordon L. Prescott’s office was done in gray, black and

scarlet; it was correct, restrained and daring all at once. A young and very

pretty secretary informed Roark that one could not see Mr. Prescott without an

appointment, but that she would be very glad to make an appointment for next

Wednesday at two-fifteen. On Wednesday at two-fifteen, the secretary smiled at

Roark and asked him please to be seated for just a moment. At four forty-five he

was admitted into Gordon L. Prescott’s office. Gordon L. Prescott wore a brown

checkered tweed jacket and a white turtle-neck sweater of angora wool. He was

tall, athletic and thirty-five, but his face combined a crisp air of

sophisticated wisdom with the soft skin, the button nose, the small, puffed

mouth of a college hero. His face was sun-scorched, his blond hair clipped

short, in a military Prussian haircut. He was frankly masculine, frankly

unconcerned about elegance and frankly conscious of the effect.

He listened to Roark silently, and his eyes were like a stop watch registering

each separate second consumed by each separate word of Roark’s. He let the first

sentence go by; on the second he interrupted to say curtly: "Let me see your

drawings," as if to make it clear that anything Roark might say was quite well

known to him already.

He held the drawings in his bronzed hands. Before he looked down at them, he

said: "Ah, yes, so many young men come to me for advice, so many." He glanced at

the first sketch, but raised his head before he had seen it. "Of course, it’s

the combination of the practical and the transcendental that is so hard for

beginners to grasp." He slipped the sketch to the bottom of the pile.

"Architecture is primarily a utilitarian conception, and the problem is to

elevate the principle of pragmatism into the realm of esthetic abstraction. All

else is nonsense." He glanced at two sketches and slipped them to the bottom. "I

have no patience with visionaries who see a holy crusade in architecture for

architecture’s sake. The great dynamic principle is the common principle of the

human equation." He glanced at a sketch and slipped it under. "The public taste

and the public heart are the final criteria of the artist. The genius is the one

who knows how to express the general. The exception is to tap the

unexceptional." He

weighed the pile of sketches in his hand, noted that he had gone through half of

them and dropped them down on the desk.

"Ah, yes," he said, "your work. Very interesting. But not practical. Not mature.

Unfocused and undisciplined. Adolescent. Originality for originality’s sake. Not

at all in the spirit of the present day. If you want an idea of the sort of

thing for which there is a crying need--here--let me show you." He took a sketch

out of a drawer of the desk. "Here’s a young man who came to me totally

unrecommended, a beginner who had never worked before. When you can produce

stuff like this, you won’t find it necessary to look for a job. I saw this one

sketch of his and I took him on at once, started him at twenty-five a week, too.