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my!--you’d allow someone more obnoxious than myself to barge in on you, just to

talk about that subject. Though I don’t know who could be more obnoxious to you

than myself, at the moment."

"Peter Keating," she said.

He made a grimace, wrinkling his nose: "Oh, no. He’s not big enough for that.

But let’s talk about Peter Keating. It’s such a convenient coincidence that he

happens to be your father’s partner. You’re merely working your head off to

procure commissions for your father, like a dutiful daughter, nothing more

natural. You’ve done wonders for the firm of Francon & Keating in these last

three months. Just by smiling at a few dowagers and wearing stunning models at

some of our better gatherings. Wonder what you’d accomplish if you decided to go

all the way and sell your matchless body for purposes other than esthetic

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contemplation--in exchange for commissions for Peter Keating." He paused, she

said nothing, and he added: "My compliments, Dominique, you’ve lived up to my

best opinion of you--by not being shocked at this."

"What was that intended for, Ellsworth? Shock value or hint value?"

"Oh, it could have been a number of things--a preliminary feeler, for instance.

But, as a matter of fact, it was nothing at all. Just a touch of vulgarity. Also

the Toohey technique--you know, I always advise the wrong touch at the right

time. I am--essentially--such an earnest, single-toned Puritan that I must allow

myself another color occasionally--to relieve the monotony."

"Are you, Ellsworth? I wonder what you are--essentially. I don’t know."

"I dare say nobody does," he said pleasantly. "Although really, there’s no

mystery about it at all. It’s very simple. All things are simple when you reduce

them to fundamentals. You’d be surprised if you knew how few fundamentals there

are. Only two, perhaps. To explain all of us. It’s the untangling, the reducing

that’s difficult--that’s why people don’t like to bother. I don’t think they’d

like the results, either."

"I don’t mind. I know what I am. Go ahead and say it. I’m just a bitch."

"Don’t fool yourself, my dear. You’re much worse than a bitch. You’re a saint.

Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable."

"And you?"

"As a matter of fact, I know exactly what I am. That alone can explain a great

deal about me. I’m giving you a helpful hint--if you care to use it. You don’t,

of course. You might, though--in the future."

"Why should I?"

"You need me, Dominique. You might as well understand me a little. You see, I’m

not afraid of being understood. Not by you."

"I need you?"

"Oh, come on, show a little courage, too."

She sat up and waited coldly, silently. He smiled, obviously with pleasure,

making no effort to hide the pleasure.

"Let’s see," he said, studying the ceiling with casual attention, "those

commissions you got for Peter Keating. The Cryon office building was mere

nuisance value--Howard Roark never had a chance at that. The Lindsay home was

better--Roark was definitely considered, I think he would have got it but for

you. The Stonebrook Clubhouse also--he had a chance at that, which you ruined."

He looked at her and chuckled softly. "No comments on techniques and punches,

Dominique?" The smile was like cold grease floating over the fluid sounds of his

voice. "You slipped up on the Norris country house--he got that last week, you

know. Well, you can’t be a hundred per cent successful. After all, the Enright

House is a big job; it’s creating a lot of talk, and quite a few people are

beginning to show interest in Mr. Howard Roark. But you’ve done remarkably well.

My congratulations. Now don’t you think I’m being nice to you? Every artist

needs appreciation--and there’s nobody to compliment you, since nobody knows

what you’re doing, but Roark and me, and he won’t thank you. On second thought,

I don’t think Roark knows what you’re doing, and that spoils the fun, doesn’t

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it?"

She asked: "How do you know what I’m doing?"--her voice tired.

"My dear, surely you haven’t forgotten that it was I who gave you the idea in

the first place?"

"Oh, yes," she said absently. "Yes."

"And now you know why I came here. Now you know what I meant when I spoke about

my side."

"Yes," she said. "Of course."

"This is a pact, my dear. An alliance. Allies never trust each other, but that

doesn’t spoil their effectiveness. Our motives might be quite opposite. In fact,

they are. But it doesn’t matter. The result will be the same. It is not

necessary to have a noble aim in common. It is necessary only to have a common

enemy. We have."

"Yes."

"That’s why you need me. I’ve been helpful once."

"Yes."

"I can hurt your Mr. Roark much better than any tea party you’ll ever give."

"What for?"

"Omit the what-fors. I don’t inquire into yours."

"All right."

"Then it’s to be understood between us? We’re allies in this?"

She looked at him, she slouched forward, attentive, her face empty. Then she

said: "We’re allies."

"Fine, my dear. Now listen. Stop mentioning him in your column every other day

or so. I know, you take vicious cracks at him each time, but it’s too much.

You’re keeping his name in print, and you don’t want to do that. Further, you’d

better invite me to those parties of yours. There are things I can do which you

can’t. Another tip: Mr. Gilbert Colton--you know, the California pottery

Coltons--is planning a branch factory in the east. He’s thinking of a good

modernist. In fact, he’s thinking of Mr. Roark. Don’t let Roark get it. It’s a

huge job--with lots of publicity. Go and invent a new tea sandwich for Mrs.

Colton. Do anything you wish. But don’t let Roark get it."

She got up, dragged her feet to a table, her arms swinging loosely, and took a

cigarette. She lighted it, turned to him, and said indifferently: "You can talk

very briefly and to the point--when you want to."

"When I find it necessary."

She stood at the window, looking out over the city. She said: "You’ve never

actually done anything against Roark. I didn’t know you cared quite so much."

"Oh, my dear. Haven’t I"

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"You’ve never mentioned him in print."

"That, my dear, is what I’ve done against Mr. Roark. So far."

"When did you first hear of him?"

"When I saw drawings of the Heller house. You didn’t think I’d miss that, did

you? And you?"

"When I saw drawings of the Enright House."

"Not before?"

"Not before."

She smoked in silence; then she said, without turning to him:

"Ellsworth, if one of us tried to repeat what we said here tonight, the other

would deny it and it could never be proved. So it doesn’t matter if we’re

sincere with each other, does it? It’s quite safe. Why do you hate him?"

"I never said I hated him."

She shrugged.

"As for the rest," he added, "I think you can answer that yourself."

She nodded slowly to the bright little point of her cigarette’s reflection on

the glass plane.

He got up, walked over to her, and stood looking at the lights of the city below

them, at the angular shapes of buildings, at the dark walls made translucent by

the glow of the windows, as if the walls were only a checkered veil of thin

black gauze over a solid mass of radiance. And Ellsworth Toohey said softly:

"Look at it. A sublime achievement, isn’t it? A heroic achievement. Think of the

thousands who worked to create this and of the millions who profit by it. And it

is said that but for the spirit of a dozen men, here and there down the ages,

but for a dozen men--less, perhaps--none of this would have been possible. And

that might be true. If so, there are--again--two possible attitudes to take. We

can say that these twelve were great benefactors, that we are all fed by the

overflow of the magnificent wealth of their spirit, and that we are glad to

accept it in gratitude and brotherhood. Or, we can say that by the splendor of

their achievement which we can neither equal nor keep, these twelve have shown

us what we are, that we do not want the free gifts of their grandeur, that a

cave by an oozing swamp and a fire of sticks rubbed together are preferable to

skyscrapers and neon lights--if the cave and the sticks are the limit of your

own creative capacities. Of the two attitudes, Dominique, which would you call

the truly humanitarian one? Because, you see, I’m a humanitarian."

#

After a while Dominique found it easier to associate with people. She learned to

accept self-torture as an endurance test, urged on by the curiosity to discover

how much she could endure. She moved through formal receptions, theater parties,

dinners, dances--gracious and smiling, a smile that made her face brighter and

colder, like the sun on a winter day. She listened emptily to empty words

uttered as if the speaker would be insulted by any sign of enthusiastic interest

from his listener, as if only boredom were the only bond possible between

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people, the only preservative of their precarious dignity. She nodded to

everything and accepted everything.

"Yes, Mr. Holt, I think Peter Keating is the man of the century--our century."

"No, Mr. Inskip, not Howard Roark, you don’t want Howard Roark....A phony? Of

course, he’s a phony--it takes your sensitive honesty to evaluate the integrity

of a man....Nothing much? No, Mr. Inskip, of course, Howard Roark is nothing

much. It’s all a matter of size and distance--and distance....No, I don’t think

very much, Mr. Inskip--I’m glad you like my eyes--yes, they always look like

that when I’m enjoying myself--and it made me so happy to hear you say that

Howard Roark is nothing much."

"You’ve met Mr. Roark, Mrs. Jones? And you didn’t like him?...Oh, he’s the type

of man for whom one can feel no compassion? How true. Compassion is a wonderful

thing. It’s what one feels when one looks at a squashed caterpillar. An

elevating experience. One can let oneself go and spread--you know, like taking a

girdle off. You don’t have to hold your stomach, your heart or your spirit

up--when you feel compassion. All you have to do is look down. It’s much easier.

When you look up, you get a pain in the neck. Compassion is the greatest virtue.

It justifies suffering. There’s got to be suffering in the world, else how would

we be virtuous and feel compassion?...Oh, it has an antithesis--but such a hard,

demanding one....Admiration, Mrs. Jones, admiration. But that takes more than a

girdle....So I say that anyone for whom we can’t feel sorry is a vicious person.

Like Howard Roark."

Late at night, often, she came to Roark’s room. She came unannounced, certain of

finding him there and alone. In his room, there was no necessity to spare, lie,

agree and erase herself out of being. Here she was free to resist, to see her

resistance welcomed by an adversary too strong to fear a contest, strong enough

to need it; she found a will granting her the recognition of her own entity,

untouched and not to be touched except in clean battle, to win or to be

defeated, but to be preserved in victory or defeat, not ground into the

meaningless pulp of the impersonal.

When they lay in bed together it was--as it had to be, as the nature of the act

demanded--an act of violence. It was surrender, made the more complete by the

force of their resistance. It was an act of tension, as the great things on

earth are things of tension. It was tense as electricity, the force fed on

resistance, rushing through wires of metal stretched tight; it was tense as

water made into power by the restraining violence of a dam. The touch of his

skin against hers was not a caress, but a wave of pain, it became pain by being

wanted too much, by releasing in fulfillment all the past hours of desire and

denial. It was an act of clenched teeth and hatred, it was the unendurable, the

agony, an act of passion--the word born to mean suffering--it was the moment

made of hatred, tension, pain--the moment that broke its own elements, inverted

them, triumphed, swept into a denial of all suffering, into its antithesis, into

ecstasy.

She came to his room from a party, wearing an evening gown expensive and fragile

like a coating of ice over her body--and she leaned against the wall, feeling

the rough plaster under her skin, glancing slowly at every object around her, at

the crude kitchen table loaded with sheets of paper, at the steel rulers, at the

towels smudged by the black prints of five fingers, at the bare boards of the

floor--and she let her glance slide down the length of her shining satin, down

to the small triangle of a silver sandal, thinking of how she would be undressed

here. She liked to wander about the room, to throw her gloves down among a

litter of pencils, rubber erasers and rags, to put her small silver bag on a

stained, discarded shirt, to snap open the catch of a diamond bracelet and drop

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it on a plate with the remnant of a sandwich, by an unfinished drawing.

"Roark," she said, standing behind his chair, her arms over his shoulders, her

hand under his shirt, fingers spread and pressed flat against his chest, "I made

Mr. Symons promise his job to Peter Keating today. Thirty-five floors, and

anything he’ll wish to make it cost, money no objective, just art, free art."

She heard the sound of his soft chuckle, but he did not turn to look at her,

only his fingers closed over her wrist and he pushed her hand farther down under

his shirt, pressing it hard against his skin. Then she pulled his head back, and