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feeling that told him he had missed a chance which would never return; that

something was closing in on them both and they had surrendered. He cursed,

because he could not say what it was that they should have fought. He hurried on

to his office where he was being late for an appointment with Mrs. Moorehead.

Catherine stood in the middle of the room, after he had left, and wondered why

she suddenly felt empty and cold; why she hadn’t known until this moment that

she had hoped he would force her to follow him. Then she shrugged, and smiled

reproachfully at herself, and went back to the work on her desk.

13.

ON A DAY in October, when the Heller house was nearing completion, a lanky young

man in overalls stepped out of a small group that stood watching the house from

the road and approached Roark.

"You the fellow who built the Booby Hatch?" he asked, quite diffidently.

"If you mean this house, yes," Roark answered.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, sir. It’s only that that’s what they call the place

around here. It’s not what I’d call it. You see, I’ve got a building job...well,

not exactly, but I’m going to build a filling station of my own about ten miles

from here, down on the Post Road. I’d like to talk to you."

Later, on a bench in front of the garage where he worked, Jimmy Gowan explained

in detail. He added: "And how I happened to think of you, Mr. Roark, is that I

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like it, that funny house of yours. Can’t say why, but I like it. It makes sense

to me. And then again I figured everybody’s gaping at it and talking about it,

well, that’s no use to a house, but that’d be plenty smart for a business, let

them giggle, but let them talk about it. So I thought I’d get you to build it,

and then they’ll all say I’m crazy, but do you care? I don’t."

Jimmy Gowan had worked like a mule for fifteen years, saving money for a

business of his own. People voiced indignant objections to his choice of

architect; Jimmy uttered no word of explanation or self-defense; he said

politely: "Maybe so, folks, maybe so," and proceeded to have Roark build his

station.

The station opened on a day in late December. It stood on the edge of the Boston

Post Road, two small structures of glass and concrete forming a semicircle among

the trees: the cylinder of the office and the long, low oval of the diner, with

the gasoline pumps as the colonnade of a forecourt between them. It was a study

in circles; there were no angles and no straight lines; it looked like shapes

caught in a flow, held still at the moment of being poured, at the precise

moment when they formed a harmony that seemed too perfect to be intentional. It

looked like a cluster of bubbles hanging low over the ground, not quite touching

it, to be swept aside in an instant on a wind of speed; it looked gay, with the

hard, bracing gaiety of efficiency, like a powerful airplane engine.

Roark stayed at the station on the day of its opening. He drank coffee in a

clean, white mug, at the counter of the diner, and he watched the cars stopping

at the door. He left late at night. He looked back once, driving down the long,

empty road. The lights of the station winked, flowing away from him. There it

stood, at the crossing of two roads, and cars would be streaming past it day and

night, cars coming from cities in which there was no room for buildings such as

this, going to cities in which there would be no buildings such as this. He

turned his face to the road before him, and he kept his eyes off the mirror

which still held, glittering softly, dots of light that moved away far behind

him....

He drove back to months of idleness. He sat in his office each morning, because

he knew that he had to sit there, looking at a door that never opened, his

fingers forgotten on a telephone that never rang. The ash trays he emptied each

day, before leaving, contained nothing but the stubs of his own cigarettes.

"What are you doing about it, Howard?" Austen Heller asked him at dinner one

evening.

"Nothing."

"But you must."

"There’s nothing I can do."

"You must learn how to handle people."

"I can’t."

"Why?"

"I don’t know how. I was born without some one particular sense."

"It’s something one acquires."

"I have no organ to acquire it with. I don’t know whether it’s something I lack,

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or something extra I have that stops me. Besides, I don’t like people who have

to be handled."

"But you can’t sit still and do nothing now. You’ve got to go after

commissions."

"What can I tell people in order to get commissions? I can only show my work. If

they don’t hear that, they won’t hear anything I say. I’m nothing to them, but

my work--my work is all we have in common. And I have no desire to tell them

anything else."

"Then what are you going to do? You’re not worried?"

"No. I expected it. I’m waiting."

"For what?"

"My kind of people."

"What kind is that?"

"I don’t know. Yes, I do know, but I can’t explain it. I’ve often wished I

could. There must be some one principle to cover it, but I don’t know what it

is."

"Honesty?"

"Yes...no, only partly. Guy Francon is an honest man, but it isn’t that.

Courage? Ralston Holcombe has courage, in his own manner....I don’t know. I’m

not that vague on other things. But I can tell my kind of people by their faces.

By something in their faces. There will be thousands passing by your house and

by the gas station. If out of those thousands, one stops and sees it--that’s all

I need."

"Then you do need other people, after all, don’t you, Howard?"

"Of course. What are you laughing at?"

"I’ve always thought that you were the most anti-social animal I’ve ever had the

pleasure of meeting."

"I need people to give me work. I’m not building mausoleums. Do you suppose I

should need them in some other way? In a closer, more personal way?"

"You don’t need anyone in a very personal way."

"No."

"You’re not even boasting about it."

"Should I?"

You can’t. You’re too arrogant to boast."

"Is that what I am?"

"Don’t you know what you are?"

"No. Not as far as you’re seeing me, or anyone else."

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Heller sat silently, his wrist describing circles with a cigarette. Then Heller

laughed, and said:

"That was typical."

"What?"

"That you didn’t ask me to tell you what you are as I see you. Anybody else

would have."

"I’m sorry. It wasn’t indifference. You’re one of the few friends I want to

keep. I just didn’t think of asking."

"I know you didn’t. That’s the point. You’re a self-centered monster, Howard.

The more monstrous because you’re utterly innocent about it."

"That’s true."

"You should show a little concern when you admit that."

"Why?"

"You know, there’s a thing that stumps me. You’re the coldest man I know. And I

can’t understand why--knowing that you’re actually a fiend in your quiet sort of

way--why I always feel, when I see you, that you’re the most life-giving person

I’ve ever met."

"What do you mean?"

"I don’t know. Just that."

The weeks went by, and Roark walked to his office each day, sat at his desk for

eight hours, and read a great deal. At five o’clock, he walked home. He had

moved to a better room, near the office; he spent little; he had enough money

for a long time to come.

On a morning in February the telephone rang in his office. A brisk, emphatic

feminine voice asked for an appointment with Mr. Roark, the architect. That

afternoon, a brisk, small, dark-skinned woman entered the office; she wore a

mink coat and exotic earrings that tinkled when she moved her head. She moved

her head a great deal, in sharp little birdlike jerks. She was Mrs. Wayne Wilmot

of Long Island and she wished to build a country house. She had selected Mr.

Roark to build it, she explained, because he had designed the home of Austen

Heller. She adored Austen Heller; he was, she stated, an oracle to all those

pretending just the tiniest bit to the title of progressive intellectual, she

thought--"don’t you?"--and she followed Heller like a zealot, "yes, literally,

like a zealot." Mr. Roark was very young, wasn’t he?--but she didn’t mind that,

she was very liberal and glad to help youth. She wanted a large house, she had

two children, she believed in expressing their individuality--"don’t you?"--and

each had to have a separate nursery, she had to have a library--"I read to

distraction"--a music room, a conservatory--"we grow lilies-of-the-valley, my

friends tell me it’s my flower"--a den for her husband, who trusted her

implicitly and let her plan the house--"because I’m so good at it, if I weren’t

a woman I’m sure I’d be an architect"--servants’ rooms and all that, and a

three-car garage. After an hour and a half of details and explanations, she

said:

"And of course, as to the style of the house, it will be English Tudor. I adore

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English Tudor."

He looked at her. He asked slowly:

"Have you seen Austen Heller’s house?"

"No, though I did want to see it, but how could I?--I’ve never met Mr. Heller,

I’m only his fan, just that, a plain, ordinary fan, what is he like in

person?--you must tell me, I’m dying to hear it--no, I haven’t seen his house,

it’s somewhere up in Maine, isn’t it?"

Roark took photographs out of the desk drawer and handed them to her.

"This," he said, "is the Heller house."

She looked at the photographs, her glance like water skimming off their glossy

surfaces, and threw them down on the desk.

"Very interesting," she said. "Most unusual. Quite stunning. But, of course,

that’s not what I want. That kind of a house wouldn’t express my personality. My

friends tell me I have the Elizabethan personality."

Quietly, patiently, he tried to explain to her why she should not build a Tudor

house. She interrupted him in the middle of a sentence.

"Look here, Mr. Roark, you’re not trying to teach me something, are you? I’m

quite sure that I have good taste, and I know a great deal about architecture,

I’ve taken a special course at the club. My friends tell me that I know more

than many architects. I’ve quite made up my mind that I shall have an English

Tudor house. I do not care to argue about it."

"You’ll have to go to some other architect, Mrs. Wilmot."

She stared at him incredulously.

"You mean, you’re refusing the commission?"

"Yes."

"You don’t want my commission?"

"No."

"But why?"

"I don’t do this sort of thing."

"But I thought architects..."

"Yes. Architects will build you anything you ask for. Any other architect in

town will."

"But I gave you first chance."

"Will you do me a favor, Mrs. Wilmot? Will you tell me why you came to me if all

you wanted was a Tudor house?"

"Well, I certainly thought you’d appreciate the opportunity. And then, I thought

I could tell my friends that I had Austen Heller’s architect."

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He tried to explain and to convince. He knew, while he spoke, that it was

useless, because his words sounded as if they were hitting a vacuum. There was

no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the

opinions of her friends, the picture post cards she had seen, the novels of

country squires she had read; it was this that he had to address, this

immateriality which could not hear him or answer, deaf and impersonal like a wad

of cotton.

"I’m sorry," said Mrs. Wayne Wilmot, "but I’m not accustomed to dealing with a

person utterly incapable of reason. I’m quite sure I shall find plenty of bigger

men who’ll be glad to work for me. My husband was opposed to my idea of having

you, in the first place, and I’m sorry to see that he was right. Good day, Mr.

Roark."

She walked out with dignity, but she slammed the door. He slipped the

photographs back into the drawer of his desk.

Mr. Robert L. Mundy, who came to Roark’s office in March, had been sent by

Austin Heller. Mr. Mundy’s voice and hair were gray as steel, but his eyes were

blue, gentle and wistful. He wanted to build a house in Connecticut, and he

spoke of it tremulously, like a young bridegroom and like a man groping for his

last, secret goal.

"It’s not just a house, Mr. Roark," he said with timid diffidence, as if he were

speaking to a man older and more prominent than himself, "it’s like...like a

symbol to me. It’s what I’ve been waiting and working for all these years. It’s

so many years now....I must tell you this, so you’ll understand. I have a great

deal of money now, more than I care to think about. I didn’t always have it.

Maybe it came too late. I don’t know. Young people think that you forget what

happens on the way when you get there. But you don’t. Something stays. I’ll

always remember how I was a boy--in a little place down in Georgia, that

was--and how I ran errands for the harness maker, and the kids laughed when

carriages drove by and splashed mud all over my pants. That’s how long ago I

decided that some day I’d have a house of my own, the kind of house that

carriages stop before. After that, no matter how hard it got to be at times, I’d

always think of that house, and it helped. Afterward, there were years when I

was afraid of it--I could have built it, but I was afraid. Well, now the time

has come. Do you understand, Mr. Roark? Austen said you’d be just the man who’d