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other--except what we are. It made the moments she remembered greater, the

moments not touched by the sight of others, by the words of others, not even by

their knowledge. She thought, it has no existence here, except in me and in him.

She felt a sense of possession, such as she could feel nowhere else. She could

never own him as she owned him in a room among strangers when she seldom looked

in his direction. If she glanced at him across the room and saw him in

conversation with blank, indifferent faces, she turned away, unconcerned; if the

faces were hostile, she watched for a second, pleased; she was angry when she

saw a smile, a sign of warmth or approval on a face turned to him. It was not

jealousy; she did not care whether the face was a man’s or a woman’s; she

resented the approval as an impertinence.

She was tortured by peculiar things: by the street where he lived, by the

doorstep of his house, by the cars that turned the corner of his block. She

resented the cars in particular; she wished she could make them drive on to the

next street. She looked at the garbage pail by the stoop next door, and she

wondered whether it had stood there when he passed by, on his way to his office

this morning, whether he had looked at that crumpled cigarette package on top.

Once, in the lobby of his house, she saw a man stepping out of the elevator; she

was shocked for a second; she had always felt as if he were the only inhabitant

of that house. When she rode up in the small, self-operating elevator, she stood

leaning against the wall, her arms crossed over her breast, her hands hugging

her shoulders, feeling huddled and intimate, as in a stall under a warm shower.

She thought of that, while some gentleman was telling her about the latest show

on Broadway, while Roark was sipping a cocktail at the other end of the room,

while she heard the hostess whispering to somebody: "My Lord, I didn’t think

Gordon would bring Dominique--I know Austen will be furious at me, because of

his friend Roark being here, you know."

Later, lying across his bed, her eyes closed, her cheeks flushed, her lips wet,

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losing the sense of the rules she herself had imposed, losing the sense of her

words, she whispered: "Roark, there was a man talking to you out there today,

and he was smiling at you, the fool, the terrible fool, last week he was looking

at a pair of movie comedians and loving them, I wanted to tell that man: don’t

look at him, you’ll have no right to want to look at anything else, don’t like

him, you’ll have to hate the rest of the world, it’s like that, you damn fool,

one or the other, not together, not with the same eyes, don’t look at him, don’t

like him, don’t approve, that’s what I wanted to tell him, not you and the rest

of it, I can’t bear to see that, I can’t stand it, anything to take you away

from it, from their world, from all of them, anything, Roark..." She did not

hear herself saying it, she did not see him smiling, she did not recognize the

full understanding in his face, she saw only his face close over hers, and she

had nothing to hide from him, nothing to keep unstated, everything was granted,

answered, found.

#

Peter Keating was bewildered. Dominique’s sudden devotion to his career seemed

dazzling, flattering, enormously profitable; everybody told him so; but there

were moments when he did not feel dazzled or flattered; he felt uneasy.

He tried to avoid Guy Francon. "How did you do it, Peter? How did you do it?"

Francon would ask. "She must be crazy about you! Who’d every think that

Dominique of all people would...? And who’d think she could? She’d have made me

a millionaire if she’d done her stuff five years ago. But then, of course, a

father is not the same inspiration as a..." He caught an ominous look on

Keating’s face and changed the end of his sentence to: "as her man, shall we

say?"

"Listen, Guy," Keating began, and stopped, sighing, and muttered: "Please, Guy,

we mustn’t..."

"I know, I know, I know. We mustn’t be premature. But hell, Peter, entre nous,

isn’t it all as public as an engagement? More so. And louder." Then the smile

vanished, and Francon’s face looked earnest, peaceful, frankly aged, in one of

his rare flashes of genuine dignity. "And I’m glad, Peter," he said simply.

"That’s what I wanted to happen. I guess I always did love Dominique, after all.

It makes me happy. I know I’ll be leaving her in good hands. Her and everything

else eventually..."

"Look, old man, will you forgive me? I’m so terribly rushed--had two hours sleep

last night, the Colton factory, you know, Jesus, what a job!--thanks to

Dominique--it’s a killer, but wait till you see it! Wait till you see the check,

too!"

"Isn’t she wonderful? Will you tell me, why is she doing it? I’ve asked her and

I can’t make head or tail of what she says, she gives me the craziest gibberish,

you know how she talks."

"Oh well, we should worry, so long as she’s doing it!"

He could not tell Francon that he had no answer; he couldn’t admit that he had

not seen Dominique alone for months; that she refused to see him.

He remembered his last private conversation with her--in the cab on their way

from Toohey’s meeting. He remembered the indifferent calm of her insults to

him--the utter contempt of insults delivered without anger. He could have

expected anything after that--except to see her turn into his champion, his

press agent, almost--his pimp. That’s what’s wrong, he thought, that I can think

of words like that when I think about it.

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He had seen her often since she started on her unrequested campaign; he had been

invited to her parties--and introduced to his future clients; he had never been

allowed a moment alone with her. He had tried to thank her and to question her.

But he could not force a conversation she did not want continued, with a curious

mob of guests pressing all around them. So he went on smiling blandly--her hand

resting casually on the black sleeve of his dinner jacket, her thigh against his

as she stood beside him, her pose possessive and intimate, made flagrantly

intimate by her air of not noticing it, while she told an admiring circle what

she thought of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. He heard envious comments from all

his friends. He was, he thought bitterly, the only man in New York City who did

not think that Dominique Francon was in love with him.

But he knew the dangerous instability of her whims, and this was too valuable a

whim to disturb. He stayed away from her and sent her flowers; he rode along and

tried not to think of it; the little edge remained--a thin edge of uneasiness.

One day, he met her by chance in a restaurant. He saw her lunching alone and

grasped the opportunity. He walked straight to her table, determined to act like

an old friend who remembered nothing but her incredible benevolence. After many

bright comments on his luck, he asked: "Dominique, why have you been refusing to

see me?"

"What should I have wanted to see you for?"

"But good Lord Almighty!..." That came out involuntarily, with too sharp a sound

of long-suppressed anger, and he corrected it hastily, smiling: "Well, don’t you

think you owed me a chance to thank you?"

"You’ve thanked me. Many times."

"Yes, but didn’t you think we really had to meet alone? Didn’t you think that

I’d be a little...bewildered?"

"I haven’t thought of it. Yes, I suppose you could be."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"What is it all about?"

"About...fifty thousand dollars by now, I think."

"You’re being nasty."

"Want me to stop?"

"Oh no! That is, not..."

"Not the commissions. Fine. I won’t stop them. You see? What was there for us to

talk about? I’m doing things for you and you’re glad to have me do them--so

we’re in perfect agreement."

"You do say the funniest things! In perfect agreement. That’s

sort of a redundancy and an understatement at the same time,

isn’t it? What else could we be under the circumstances? You

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wouldn’t expect me to object to what you’re doing, would you?"

"No. I wouldn’t."

"But agreeing is not the word for what I feel. I’m so terribly grateful to you

that I’m simply dizzy--I was bowled over--don’t let me get silly now--I know you

don’t like that--but I’m so grateful I don’t know what to do with myself."

"Fine, Peter. Now you’ve thanked me."

"You see, I’ve never flattered myself by thinking that you thought very much of

my work or cared or took any notice. And then you...That’s what makes me so

happy and...Dominique," he asked, and his voice jerked a little, because the

question was like a nook pulling at a line, long and hidden, and he knew that

this was the core of his uneasiness, "do you really think that I’m a great

architect?"

She smiled slowly. She said: "Peter, if people heard you asking that, they’d

laugh. Particularly, asking that of me."

"Yes, I know, but...but do you really mean them, all those things you say about

me?"

"They work."

"Yes, but is that why you picked me? Because you think I’m good?"

"You sell like hot cakes. Isn’t that proof?"

"Yes...No...I mean...in a different way...I mean...Dominique, I’d like to hear

you say once, just once, that I..."

"Listen, Peter, I’ll have to run along in a moment, but before I go I must tell

you that you’ll probably hear from Mrs. Lonsdale tomorrow or the next day. Now

remember that she’s a prohibitionist, loves dogs, hates women who smoke, and

believes in reincarnation. She wants her house to be better than Mrs.

Purdee’s--Holcombe did Purdee’s--so if you tell her that Mrs. Purdee’s house

looks ostentatious and that true simplicity costs much more money, you’ll get

along fine. You might discuss petit point too. That’s her hobby."

He went away, thinking happily about Mrs. Lonsdale’s house, and he forgot his

question. Later, he remembered it resentfully, and shrugged, and told himself

that the best part of Dominique’s help was her desire not to see him.

As a compensation, he found pleasure in attending the meetings of Toohey’s

Council of American Builders. He did not know why he should think of it as

compensation, but he did and it was comforting. He listened attentively when

Gordon L. Prescott made a speech on the meaning of architecture.

"And thus the intrinsic significance of our craft lies in the philosophical fact

that we deal in nothing. We create emptiness through which certain physical

bodies are to move--we shall designate them for convenience as humans. By

emptiness I mean what is commonly known as rooms. Thus it is only the crass

layman who thinks that we put up stone walls. We do nothing of the kind. We put

up emptiness, as I have proved. This leads us to a corollary of astronomical

importance: to the unconditional acceptance of the premise that ’absence’ is

superior to ’presence.’ That is, to the acceptance of non-acceptance. I shall

state this in simpler terms--for the sake of clarity: ’nothing’ is superior to

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’something.’ Thus it is clear that the architect is more than a

bricklayer--since the fact of bricks is a secondary illusion anyway. The

architect is a metaphysical priest dealing in basic essentials, who has the

courage to face the primal conception of reality as nonreality--since there is

nothing and he creates nothingness. If this sounds like a contradiction, it is

not a proof of bad logic, but of a higher logic, the dialectics of all life and

art. Should you wish to make the inevitable deductions from this basic

conception, you may come to conclusions of vast sociological importance. You may

see that a beautiful woman is inferior to a non-beautiful one, that the literate

is inferior to the illiterate, that the rich is inferior to the poor, and the

able to the incompetent. The architect is the concrete illustration of a cosmic

paradox. Let us be modest in the vast pride of this realization. Everything else

is twaddle."

One could not worry about one’s value or greatness when listening to this. It

made self-respect unnecessary.

Keating listened in thick contentment. He glanced at the others. There was an

attentive silence in the audience; they all liked it as he liked it. He saw a

boy chewing gum, a man cleaning his fingernails with the corner of a match

folder, a youth stretched out loutishly. That, too, pleased Keating; it was as

if they said: We are glad to listen to the sublime, but it’s not necessary to be

too damn reverent about the sublime.

The Council of American Builders met once a month and engaged in no tangible

activity, beyond listening to speeches and sipping an inferior brand of root

beer. Its membership did not grow fast either in quantity or in quality. There

were no concrete results achieved.

The meetings of the Council were held in a huge, empty room over a garage on the

West Side. A long, narrow, unventilated stairway led to a door bearing the

Council’s name; there were folding chairs inside, a table for the chairman, and

a wastebasket. The A.G.A. considered the Council of American Builders a silly

joke. "Why do you want to waste time on those cranks for?"

Francon asked Keating in the rose-lit satin-stuffed rooms of the A.G.A.,

wrinkling his nose with fastidious amusement. "Damned if I know," Keating

answered gaily. "I like them." Ellsworth Toohey attended every meeting of the

Council, but did not speak. He sat in a corner and listened.

One night Keating and Toohey walked home together after the meeting, down the

dark, shabby streets of the West Side, and stopped for a cup of coffee at a

seedy drugstore. "Why not a drugstore?" Toohey laughed when Keating reminded him