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He managed to be at the door when she was leaving.

She stopped and smiled at him enchantingly.

"No," she said, before he could utter a word, "you can’t take me home. I have a

car waiting. Thank you just the same."

She was gone and he stood at the door, helpless and thinking furiously that he

believed he was blushing.

He felt a soft hand on his shoulder and turned to find Francon beside him.

"Going home, Peter? Let me give you a lift."

"But I thought you had to be at the club by seven."

"Oh, that’s all right, I’ll be a little late, doesn’t matter, I’ll drive you

home, no trouble at all." There was a peculiar expression of purpose on

Francon’s face, quite unusual for him and unbecoming.

Keating followed him silently, amused, and said nothing when they were alone in

the comfortable twilight of Francon’s car.

"Well?" Francon asked ominously.

Keating smiled. "You’re a pig, Guy. You don’t know how to appreciate what you’ve

got. Why didn’t you tell me? She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen."

"Oh, yes," said Francon darkly. "Maybe that’s the trouble."

"What trouble? Where do you see any trouble?"

"What do you really think of her, Peter? Forget the looks. You’ll see how

quickly you’ll forget that. What do you think?"

"Well, I think she has a great deal of character."

"Thanks for the understatement."

Francon was gloomily silent, and then he said with an awkward little note of

something like hope in his voice:

"You know, Peter, I was surprised. I watched you, and you had quite a long chat

with her. That’s amazing. I fully expected her to chase you away with one nice,

poisonous crack. Maybe you could get along with her, after all. I’ve concluded

that you just can’t tell anything about her. Maybe...You know, Peter, what I

wanted to tell you is this: Don’t pay any attention to what she said about my

wanting you to be horrible with her."

The heavy earnestness of that sentence was such a hint that Keating’s lips moved

to shape a soft whistle, but he caught himself in time. Francon added heavily:

"I don’t want you to be horrible with her at all."

"You know, Guy," said Keating, in a tone of patronizing reproach, "you shouldn’t

have run away like that."

"I never know how to speak to her." He sighed. "I’ve never learned to. I can’t

understand what in blazes is the matter with her, but something is. She just

won’t behave like a human being. You know, she’s been expelled from two

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finishing schools. How she ever got through college I can’t imagine, but I can

tell you that I dreaded to open my mail for four solid years, waiting for word

of the inevitable. Then I thought, well, once she’s on her own I’m through and I

don’t have to worry about it, but she’s worse than ever."

"What do you find to worry about?"

"I don’t. I try not to. I’m glad when I don’t have to think of her at all. I

can’t help it, I just wasn’t cut out for a father. But sometimes I get to feel

that it’s my responsibility after all, though God knows I don’t want it, but

still there it is, I should do something about it, there’s no one else to assume

it."

"You’ve let her frighten you, Guy, and really there’s nothing to be afraid of."

"You don’t think so?"

"No."

"Maybe you’re the man to handle her. I don’t regret your meeting her now, and

you know that I didn’t want you to. Yes, I think you’re the one man who could

handle her. You...you’re quite determined--aren’t you, Peter?--when you’re after

something?"

"Well," said Keating, throwing one hand up in a careless gesture, "I’m not

afraid very often."

Then he leaned back against the cushions, as if he were tired, as if he had

heard nothing of importance, and he kept silent for the rest of the drive.

Francon kept silent also.

#

"Boys," said John Erik Snyte, "don’t spare yourselves on this. It’s the most

important thing we’ve had this year. Not much money, you understand, but the

prestige, the connections! If we do land it, won’t some of those great

architects turn green! You see, Austen Heller has told me frankly that we’re the

third firm he’s approached. He would have none of what those big fellows tried

to sell him. So it’s up to us, boys. You know, something different, unusual, but

in good taste, and you know, different. Now do your best."

His five designers sat in a semicircle before him. "Gothic" looked bored and

"Miscellaneous" looked discouraged in advance; "Renaissance" was following the

course of a fly on the ceiling. Roark asked:

"What did he actually say, Mr. Snyte?"

Snyte shrugged and looked at Roark with amusement, as if he and Roark shared a

shameful secret about the new client, not worth mentioning.

"Nothing that makes great sense--quite between us, boys," said Snyte. "He was

somewhat inarticulate, considering his great command of the English language in

print. He admitted he knew nothing about architecture. He didn’t say whether he

wanted it modernistic or period or what. He said something to the effect that he

wanted a house of his own, but he’s hesitated for a long time about building one

because all houses look alike to him and they all look like hell and he doesn’t

see how anyone can become enthusiastic about any house, and yet he has the idea

that he wants a building he could love. ’A building that would mean something’

is what he said, though he added that he ’didn’t know what or how.’ There.

That’s about all he said. Not much to go on, and I wouldn’t have undertaken to

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submit sketches if it weren’t Austen Heller. But I grant you that it doesn’t

make sense....What’s the matter, Roark?"

"Nothing," said Roark.

This ended the first conference on the subject of a residence for Austen Heller.

Later that day Snyte crowded his five designers into a train, and they went to

Connecticut to see the site Heller had chosen. They stood on a lonely, rocky

stretch of shore, three miles beyond an unfashionable little town; they munched

sandwiches and peanuts, and they looked at a cliff rising in broken ledges from

the ground to end in a straight, brutal, naked drop over the sea, a vertical

shaft of rock forming a cross with the long, pale horizontal of the sea.

"There," said Snyte. "That’s it." He twirled a pencil in his hand. "Damnable,

eh?" He sighed. "I tried to suggest a more respectable location, but he didn’t

take it so well so I had to shut up." He twirled the pencil. "That’s where he

wants the house, right on top of that rock." He scratched the tip of his nose

with the point of the pencil. "I tried to suggest setting it farther back from

the shore and keeping the damn rock for a view, but that didn’t go so well

either." He bit the eraser between the tips of his teeth. "Just think of the

blasting, the leveling one’s got to do on that top." He cleaned his fingernail

with the lead, leaving a black mark. "Well, that’s that....Observe the grade,

and the quality of the stone. The approach will be difficult....I have all the

surveys and the photographs in the office....Well...Who’s got a

cigarette?...Well, I think that’s about all....I’ll help you with suggestions

anytime....Well...What time is that damn train back?"

Thus the five designers were started on their task. Four of them proceeded

immediately at their drawing boards. Roark returned alone to the site, many

times.

Roark’s five months with Snyte stretched behind him like a blank. Had he wished

to ask himself what he had felt, he would have found no answer, save in the fact

that he remembered nothing of these months. He could remember each sketch he had

made. He could, if he tried, remember what had happened to those sketches; he

did not try.

But he had not loved any of them as he loved the house of Austen Heller. He

stayed in the drafting room through evening after evening, alone with a sheet of

paper and the thought of a cliff over the sea. No one saw his sketches until

they were finished.

When they were finished, late one night, he sat at his table, with the sheets

spread before him, sat for many hours, one hand propping his forehead, the other

hanging by his side, blood gathering in the fingers, numbing them, while the

street beyond the window became deep blue, then pale gray. He did not look at

the sketches. He felt empty and very tired.

The house on the sketches had been designed not by Roark, but by the cliff on

which it stood. It was as if the cliff had grown and completed itself and

proclaimed the purpose for which it had been waiting. The house was broken into

many levels, following the ledges of the rock, rising as it rose, in gradual

masses, in planes flowing together up into one consummate harmony. The walls, of

the same granite as the rock, continued its vertical lines upward; the wide,

projecting terraces of concrete, silver as the sea, followed the line of the

waves, of the straight horizon.

Roark was still sitting at his table when the men returned to begin their day in

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the drafting room. Then the sketches were sent to Snyte’s office.

Two days later, the final version of the house to be submitted to Austen Heller,

the version chosen and edited by John Erik Snyte, executed by the Chinese

artist, lay swathed in tissue paper on a table. It was Roark’s house. His

competitors had been eliminated. It was Roark’s house, but its walls were now of

red brick, its windows were cut to conventional size and equipped with green

shutters, two of its projecting wings were omitted, the great cantilevered

terrace over the sea was replaced by a little wrought-iron balcony, and the

house was provided with an entrance of Ionic columns supporting a broken

pediment, and with a little spire supporting a weather vane.

John Erik Snyte stood by the table, his two hands spread in the air over the

sketch, without touching the virgin purity of its delicate colors.

"That is what Mr. Heller had in mind, I’m sure," he said. "Pretty good...Yes,

pretty good...Roark, how many times do I have to ask you not to smoke around a

final sketch? Stand away. You’ll get ashes on it."

Austen Heller was expected at twelve o’clock. But at half past eleven Mrs.

Symington arrived unannounced and demanded to see Mr. Snyte immediately. Mrs.

Symington was an imposing dowager who had just moved into her new residence

designed by Mr. Snyte; besides, Snyte expected a commission for an apartment

house from her brother. He could not refuse to see her and he bowed her into his

office, where she proceeded to state without reticence of expression that the

ceiling of her library had cracked and the bay windows of her drawing room were

hidden under a perpetual veil of moisture which she could not combat. Snyte

summoned his chief engineer and they launched together into detailed

explanations, apologies and damnations of contractors. Mrs. Symington showed no

sign of relenting when a signal buzzed on Snyte’s desk and the reception clerk’s

voice announced Austen Heller.

It would have been impossible to ask Mrs. Symington to leave or Austen Heller to

wait. Snyte solved the problem by abandoning her to the soothing speech of his

engineer and excusing himself for a moment. Then he emerged into the reception

room, shook Heller’s hand and suggested: "Would you mind stepping into the

drafting room, Mr. Heller? Better light in there, you know, and the sketch is

all ready for you, and I didn’t want to take the chance of moving it."

Heller did not seem to mind. He followed Snyte obediently into the drafting

room, a tall, broad-shouldered figure in English tweeds, with sandy hair and a

square face drawn in countless creases around the ironical calm of the eyes.

The sketch lay on the Chinese artist’s table, and the artist stepped aside

diffidently, in silence. The next table was Roark’s. He stood with his back to

Heller; he went on with his drawing, and did not turn. The employees had been

trained not to intrude on the occasions when Snyte brought a client into the

drafting room.

Snyte’s fingertips lifted the tissue paper, as if raising the veil of a bride.

Then he stepped back and watched Heller’s face. Heller bent down and stood

hunched, drawn, intent, saying nothing for a long time.

"Listen, Mr. Snyte," he began at last. "Listen, I think..." and stopped.

Snyte waited patiently, pleased, sensing the approach of something he didn’t

want to disturb.

"This," said Heller suddenly, loudly, slamming his fist down on the drawing, and

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Snyte winced, "this is the nearest anyone’s ever come to it!"

"I knew you’d like it, Mr. Heller," said Snyte.

"I don’t," said Heller.

Snyte blinked and waited.

"It’s so near somehow," said Heller regretfully, "but it’s not right. I don’t

know where, but it’s not. Do forgive me, if this sounds vague, but I like things

at once or I don’t. I know that I wouldn’t be comfortable, for instance, with

that entrance. It’s a lovely entrance, but you won’t even notice it because

you’ve seen it so often."

"Ah, but allow me to point out a few considerations, Mr. Heller. One wants to be

modern, of course, but one wants to preserve the appearance of a home. A

combination of stateliness and coziness, you understand, a very austere house

like this must have a few softening touches. It is strictly correct

architecturally."

"No doubt," said Heller. "I wouldn’t know about that. I’ve never been strictly

correct in my life."

"Just let me explain this scheme and you’ll see that it’s..."

"I know," said Heller wearily. "I know. I’m sure you’re right. Only..." His