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were free to move with his usual elegance, in faultless dress trousers and

patent-leather pumps.

Guy Francon was very impressive as the Frink National Bank Building, although

the structure looked a little squatter than in the original, in order to allow

for Francon’s stomach; the Hadrian torch over his head had a real electric bulb

lit by a miniature battery. Ralston Holcombe was magnificent as a state capitol,

and Gordon L. Prescott was very masculine as a grain elevator. Eugene Pettingill

waddled about on his skinny, ancient legs, small and bent, an imposing Park

Avenue hotel, with horn-rimmed spectacles peering from under the majestic tower.

Two wits engaged in a duel, butting each other in the belly with famous spires,

great landmarks of the city that greet the ships approaching from across the

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ocean. Everybody had lots of fun.

Many of the architects, Athelstan Beasely in particular, commented resentfully

on Howard Roark who had been invited and did not come. They had expected to see

him dressed as the Enright House.

#

Dominique stopped in the hall and stood looking at the door, at the inscription:

"HOWARD ROARK, ARCHITECT."

She had never seen his office. She had fought against coming here for a long

time. But she had to see the place where he worked.

The secretary in the reception room was startled when Dominique gave her name,

but announced the visitor to Roark. "Go right in, Miss Francon," she said.

Roark smiled when she entered his office; a faint smile without surprise.

"I knew you’d come here some day," he said. "Want me to show you the place?"

"What’s that?" she asked.

His hands were smeared with clay; on a long table, among a litter of unfinished

sketches, stood the clay model of a building, a rough study of angles and

terraces.

"The Aquitania?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Do you always do that?"

"No. Not always. Sometimes. There’s a hard problem here. I like to play with it

for a while. It will probably be my favorite building--it’s so difficult."

"Go ahead. I want to watch you doing that. Do you mind?"

"Not at all."

In a moment, he had forgotten her presence. She sat in a corner and watched his

hands. She saw them molding walls. She saw them smash a part of the structure,

and begin again, slowly, patiently, with a strange certainty even in his

hesitation. She saw the palm of his hand smooth a long, straight plane, she saw

an angle jerked across the space in the motion of his hand before she saw it in

clay.

She rose and walked to the window. The buildings of the city far below looked no

bigger than the model on his table. It seemed to her that she could see his

hands shaping the setbacks, the corners, the roofs of all the structures below,

smashing and molding again. Her hand moved absently, following the form of a

distant building in rising steps, feeling a physical sense of possession,

feeling it for him.

She turned back to the table. A strand of hair hung down over his face bent

attentively to the model; he was not looking at her, he was looking at the shape

under his fingers. It was almost as if she were watching his hands moving over

the body of another woman. She leaned against the wall, weak with a feeling of

violent, physical pleasure.

#

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At the beginning of January, while the first steel columns rose from the

excavations that were to become the Cord Building and the Aquitania Hotel, Roark

worked on the drawings for the Temple.

When the first sketches were finished, he said to his secretary:

"Get me Steve Mallory."

"Mallory, Mr. Roark? Who...Oh, yes, the shooting sculptor."

"The what?"

"He took a shot at Ellsworth Toohey, didn’t he?"

"Did he? Yes, that’s right."

"Is that the one you want, Mr. Roark?"

"That’s the one."

For two days the secretary telephoned art dealers, galleries, architects,

newspapers. No one could tell her what had become of Steven Mallory or where he

could be found. On the third day she reported to Roark: "I’ve found an address,

in the Village, which I’m told might be his. There’s no telephone." Roark

dictated a letter asking Mallory to telephone his office.

The letter was not returned, but a week passed without answer. Then Steven

Mallory telephoned.

"Hello?" said Roark, when the secretary switched the call to him.

"Steven Mallory speaking," said a young, hard voice, in a way that left an

impatient, belligerent silence after the words.

"I should like to see you, Mr. Mallory. Can we make an appointment for you to

come to my office?"

"What do you want to see me about?"

"About a commission, of course. I want you to do some work for a building of

mine." There was a long silence.

"All right," said Mallory; his voice sounded dead. He added: "Which building?"

"The Stoddard Temple. You may have heard..."

"Yeah, I heard. You’re doing it. Who hasn’t heard? Will you pay me as much as

you’re paying your press agent?"

"I’m not paying the press agent. I’ll pay you whatever you wish to ask."

"You know that can’t be much."

"What time would it be convenient for you to come here?"

"Oh, hell, you name it. You know I’m not busy."

"Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon?"

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"All right." He added: "I don’t like your voice." Roark laughed. "I like yours.

Cut it out and be here tomorrow at two."

"Okay." Mallory hung up.

Roark dropped the receiver, grinning. But the grin vanished suddenly, and he sat

looking at the telephone, his face grave.

Mallory did not keep the appointment. Three days passed without a word from him.

Then Roark went to find him in person.

The rooming house where Mallory lived was a dilapidated brownstone in an

unlighted street that smelled of a fish market. There was a laundry and a

cobbler on the ground floor, at either side of a narrow entrance. A slatternly

landlady said: "Mallory? Fifth floor rear," and shuffled away indifferently.

Roark climbed sagging wooden stairs lighted by bulbs stuck in a web of pipes. He

knocked at a grimy door.

The door opened. A gaunt young man stood on the threshold; he had disheveled

hair, a strong mouth with a square lower lip, and the most expressive eyes that

Roark had ever seen. "What do you want?" he snapped. "Mr. Mallory?"

"Yeah."

"I’m Howard Roark."

Mallory laughed, leaning against the doorjamb, one arm stretched across the

opening, with no intention of stepping aside. He was obviously drunk. "Well,

well!" he said. "In person."

"May I come in?"

"What for?"

Roark sat down on the stair banister. "Why didn’t you keep your appointment?"

"Oh, the appointment? Oh, yes. Well, I’ll tell you," Mallory said gravely. "It

was like this: I really intended to keep it, I really did, and I started out for

your office, but on my way there I passed a movie theater that was showing Two

Heads on a Pillow, so I went in. I just had to see Two Heads on a Pillow." He

grinned, sagging against his stretched arm. "You’d better let me come in," said

Roark quietly. "Oh, what the hell, come in."

The room was a narrow hole. There was an unmade bed in a corner, a litter of

newspapers and old clothes, a gas ring, a framed landscape from the

five-and-ten, representing some sort of sick brown meadows with sheep; there

were no drawings or figures, no hints of the occupant’s profession.

Roark pushed some books and a skillet off the only chair, and sat down. Mallory

stood before him, grinning, swaying a little.

"You’re doing it all wrong," said Mallory. "That’s not the way it’s done. You

must be pretty hard up to come running after a sculptor. The way it’s done is

like this: You make me come to your office, and the first time I come you

mustn’t be there. The second time you must keep me waiting for an hour and a

half, then come out into the reception room and shake hands and ask me whether I

know the Wilsons of Podunk and say how nice that we have mutual friends, but

you’re in an awful hurry today and you’ll call me up for lunch soon and then

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we’ll talk business. Then you keep this up for two months. Then you give me the

commission. Then you tell me that I’m no good and wasn’t any good in the first

place, and you throw the thing into the ash can. Then you hire Valerian Bronson

and he does the job. That’s the way it’s done. Only not this time."

But his eyes were studying Roark intently, and his eyes had the certainty of a

professional. As he spoke, his voice kept losing its swaggering gaiety, and it

slipped to a dead flatness on the last sentences.

"No," said Roark, "not this time."

The boy stood looking at him silently.

"You’re Howard Roark?" he asked. "I like your buildings. That’s why I didn’t

want to meet you. So I wouldn’t have to be sick every time I looked at them. I

wanted to go on thinking that they had to be done by somebody who matched them."

"What if I do?"

"That doesn’t happen."

But he sat down on the edge of the crumpled bed and slumped forward, his glance

like a sensitive scale weighing Roark’s features, impertinent in its open action

of appraisal.

"Listen," said Roark, speaking clearly and very carefully, "I want you to do a

statue for the Stoddard Temple. Give me a piece of paper and I’ll write you a

contract right now, stating that I will owe you a million dollars damages if I

hire another sculptor or if your work is not used."

"You can speak normal. I’m not drunk. Not all the way. I understand."

"Well?"

"Why did you pick me?"

"Because you’re a good sculptor."

"That’s not true."

"That you’re good?"

"No. That it’s your reason. Who asked you to hire me?"

"Nobody."

"Some woman I laid?"

"I don’t know any women you laid."

"Stuck on your building budget?"

"No. The budget’s unlimited."

"Feel sorry for me?"

"No. Why should I?"

"Want to get publicity out of that shooting Toohey business?"

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"Good God, no!"

"Well, what then?"

"Why did you fish for all that nonsense instead of the simplest reason?"

"Which?"

"That I like your work."

"Sure. That’s what they all say. That’s what we’re all supposed to say and to

believe. Imagine what would happen if somebody blew the lid off that one! So,

all right, you like my work. What’s the real reason?"

"I like your work."

Mallory spoke earnestly, his voice sober.

"You mean you saw the things I’ve done, and you like

them--you--yourself--alone--without anyone telling you that you should like them

or why you should like them--and you decided that you wanted me, for that

reason--only for that reason--without knowing anything about me or giving a

damn--only because of the things I’ve done and...and what you saw in them--only

because of that, you decided to hire me, and you went to the bother of finding

me and coming here, and being insulted--only because you saw--and what you saw

made me important to you, made you want me? Is that what you mean?"

"Just that," said Roark.

The things that pulled Mallory’s eyes wide were frightening to see. Then he

shook his head, and said very simply, in the tone of soothing himself:

"No."

He leaned forward. His voice sounded dead and pleading.

"Listen, Mr. Roark. I won’t be mad at you. I just want to know. All right, I see

that you’re set on having me work for you, and you know you can get me, for

anything you say, you don’t have to sign any million-dollar contract, look at

this room, you know you’ve got me, so why shouldn’t you tell me the truth? It

won’t make any difference to you--and it’s very important to me."

"What’s very important to you?"

"Not to...not to...Look. I didn’t think anybody’d ever want me again. But you

do. All right. I’ll go through it again. Only I don’t want to think again that

I’m working for somebody who...who likes my work. That, I couldn’t go through

any more. I’ll feel better if you tell me, I’ll...I’ll feel calmer. Why should

you put on an act for me? I’m nothing. I won’t think less of you, if that’s what

you’re afraid of. Don’t you see? It’s much more decent to tell me the truth.

Then it will be simple and honest. I’ll respect you more. Really, I will."

"What’s the matter with you, kid? What have they done to you? Why do you want to

say things like that?"

"Because..." Mallory roared suddenly, and then his voice broke, and his head

dropped, and he finished in a flat whisper: "because I’ve spent two years"--his

hand circled limply indicating the room--"that’s how I’ve spent them--trying to

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get used to the fact that what you’re trying to tell me doesn’t exist...."

Roark walked over to him, lifted his chin, knocking it upward, and said:

"You’re a God-damn fool. You have no right to care what I think of your work,

what I am or why I’m here. You’re too good for that. But if you want to know

it--I think you’re the best sculptor we’ve got. I think it, because your figures

are not what men are, but what men could be--and should be. Because you’ve gone

beyond the probable and made us see what is possible, but possible only through

you. Because your figures are more devoid of contempt for humanity than any work

I’ve ever seen. Because you have a magnificent respect for the human being.