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He sat still, his head down. Then he said: "Dominique, two people like you and

me getting married, it’s almost a front-page event."

"Yes."

"Wouldn’t it be better to do it properly, with an announcement and a real

wedding ceremony?"

"I’m strong, Peter, but I’m not that strong. You can have your receptions and

your publicity afterward."

"You don’t want me to say anything now, except yes or no?"

"That’s all."

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He sat looking up at her for a long time. Her glance was on his eyes, but it had

no more reality than the glance of a portrait. He felt alone in the room. She

stood, patient, waiting, granting him nothing, not even the kindness of

prompting him to hurry. "All right, Dominique. Yes," he said at last. She

inclined her head gravely in acquiescence. He stood up. "I’ll get my coat," he

said. "Do you want to take your car?"

"Yes."

"It’s an open car, isn’t it? Should I wear my fur coat? "No. Take a warm

muffler, though. There’s a little wind."

"No luggage? We’re coming right back to the city?"

"We’re coming right back."

He left the door to the hall open, and she saw him putting on his coat, throwing

a muffler around his throat, with the gesture of flinging a cape over his

shoulder. He stepped to the door of the living room, hat in hand, and invited

her to go, with a silent movement of his head. In the hall outside he pressed

the button of the elevator and he stepped back to let her enter first. He was

precise, sure of himself, without joy, without emotion. He seemed more coldly

masculine than he had ever been before.

He took her elbow firmly, protectively, to cross the street where she had left

her car. He opened the car’s door, let her slide behind the wheel and got in

silently beside her. She leaned over across him and adjusted the glass wind

screen on his side. She said: "If it’s not right, fix it any way you want when

we start moving, so it won’t be too cold for you." He said: "Get to the Grand

Concourse, fewer lights there." She put her handbag down on his lap while she

took the wheel and started the car. There was suddenly no antagonism between

them, but a quiet, hopeless feeling of comradeship, as if they were victims of

the same impersonal disaster, who had to help each other.

She drove fast, as a matter of habit, an even speed without a sense of haste.

They sat silently to the level drone of the motor, and they sat patiently,

without shifting the positions of their bodies, when the car stopped for a

light. They seemed caught in a single streak of motion, an imperative direction

like the flight of a bullet that could not be stopped on its course. There was a

first hint of twilight in the streets of the city. The pavements looked yellow.

The shops were still open. A movie theater had lighted its sign, and the red

bulbs whirled jerkily, sucking the last daylight out of the air, making the

street look darker.

Peter Keating felt no need of speech. He did not seem to be Peter Keating any

longer. He did not ask for warmth and he did not ask for pity. He asked nothing.

She thought of that once, and she glanced at him, a glance of appreciation that

was almost gentle. He met her eyes steadily; she saw understanding, but no

comment. It was as if his glance said: "Of course," nothing else.

They were out of the city, with a cold brown road flying to meet them, when he

said:

"The traffic cops are bad around here. Got your press card with you, just in

case?"

"I’m not the press any longer."

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"You’re not what?"

"I’m not a newspaper woman any more."

"You quit your job?"

"No, I was fired."

"What are you talking about?"

"Where have you been the last few days? I thought everybody knew it."

"Sorry. I didn’t follow things very well the last few days."

Miles later, she said: "Give me a cigarette. In my bag." He opened her bag, and

he saw her cigarette case, her compact, her lipstick, her comb, a folded

handkerchief too white to touch, smelling faintly of her perfume. Somewhere

within him he thought that this was almost like unbuttoning her blouse. But most

of him was not conscious of the thought nor of the intimate proprietorship with

which he opened the bag. He took a cigarette from her case, lighted it and put

it from his lips to hers. "Thanks," she said. He lighted one for himself and

closed the bag.

When they reached Greenwich, it was he who made the inquiries, told her where to

drive, at what block to turn, and said, "Here it is," when they pulled up in

front of the judge’s house. He got out first and helped her out of the car. He

pressed the button of the doorbell.

They were married in a living room that displayed armchairs of faded tapestry,

blue and purple, and a lamp with a fringe of glass beads. The witnesses were the

judge’s wife and someone from next door named Chuck, who had been interrupted at

some household task and smelled faintly of Clorox.

Then they came back to their car and Keating asked: "Want me to drive if you’re

tired?" She said: "No, I’ll drive."

The road to the city cut through brown fields where every rise in the ground had

a shade of tired red on the side facing west. There was a purple haze eating

away the edges of the fields, and a motionless streak of fire in the sky. A few

cars came toward them as brown shapes, still visible; others had their lights

on, two disquieting spots of yellow.

Keating watched the road; it looked narrow, a small dash in the middle of the

windshield, framed by earth and hills, all of it held within the rectangle of

glass before him. But the road spread as the windshield flew forward. The road

filled the glass, it ran over the edges, it tore apart to let them pass,

streaming in two gray bands on either side of the car. He thought it was a race

and he waited to see the windshield win, to see the car hurtle into that small

dash before it had time to stretch.

"Where are we going to live now, at first?" he asked. "Your place or mine?"

"Yours, of course."

"I’d rather move to yours."

"No. I’m closing my place."

"You can’t possibly like my apartment."

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"Why not?"

"I don’t know. It doesn’t fit you."

"I’ll like it."

They were silent for a while, then he asked: "How are we going to announce this

now?"

"In any way you wish. I’ll leave it up to you."

It was growing darker and she switched on the car’s headlights. He watched the

small blurs of traffic signs, low by the side of the road, springing suddenly

into life as they approached, spelling out: "Left turn,"

"Crossing ahead," in dots of light that seemed conscious, malevolent, winking.

They drove silently, but there was no bond in their silence now; they were not

walking together toward disaster; the disaster had come; their courage did not

matter any longer.

He felt disturbed and uncertain as he always felt in the presence of Dominique

Francon.

He half turned to look at her. She kept her eyes on the road. Her profile in the

cold wind was serene and remote and lovely in a way that was hard to bear. He

looked at her gloved hands resting firmly, one on each side of the wheel. He

looked down at her slender foot on the accelerator, then his eyes rose up the

line of her leg. His glance remained on the narrow triangle of her tight gray

skirt. He realized suddenly that he had a right to think what he was thinking.

For the first time this implication of marriage occurred to him fully and

consciously. Then he knew that he had always wanted this woman, that it was the

kind of feeling he would have for a whore, only lasting and hopeless and

vicious. My wife, he thought for the first time, without a trace of respect in

the word. He felt so violent a desire that had it been summer he would have

ordered her to drive into the first side lane and he would have taken her there.

He slipped his arm along the back of the seat and encircled her shoulders, his

fingers barely touching her. She did not move, resist or turn to look at him. He

pulled his arm away, and he sat staring straight ahead.

"Mrs. Keating," he said flatly, not addressing her, just as a statement of fact.

"Mrs. Peter Keating," she said.

When they stopped in front of his apartment house, he got out and held the door

for her, but she remained sitting behind the wheel.

"Good night, Peter," she said. "I’ll see you tomorrow."

She added, before the expression of his face had turned into an obscene

swearword: "I’ll send my things over tomorrow and we’ll discuss everything then.

Everything will begin tomorrow, Peter."

"Where are you going?"

"I have things to settle."

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"But what will I tell people tonight?"

"Anything you wish, if at all."

She swung the car into the traffic and drove away.

#

When she entered Roark’s room, that evening, he smiled, not his usual faint

smile of acknowledging the expected, but a smile that spoke of waiting and pain.

He had not seen her since the trial. She had left the courtroom after her

testimony and he had heard nothing from her since. He had come to her house, but

her maid had told him that Miss Francon could not see him.

She looked at him now and she smiled. It was, for the first time, like a gesture

of complete acceptance, as if the sight of him solved everything, answered all

questions, and her meaning was only to be a woman who looked at him.

They stood silently before each other for a moment, and she thought that the

most beautiful words were those which were not needed.

When he moved, she said: "Don’t say anything about the trial. Afterward."

When he took her in his arms, she turned her body to meet his straight on, to

feel the width of his chest with the width of hers, the length of his legs with

the length of hers, as if she were lying against him, and her feet felt no

weight, and she was held upright by the pressure of his body.

They lay in bed together that night, and they did not know when they slept, the

intervals of exhausted unconsciousness as intense an act of union as the

convulsed meetings of their bodies.

In the morning, when they were dressed, she watched him move about the room. She

saw the drained relaxation of his movements; she thought of what she had taken

from him, and the heaviness of her wrists told her that her own strength was now

in his nerves, as if they had exchanged their energy.

He was at the other end of the room, his back turned to her for a moment, when

she said, "Roark," her voice quiet and low.

He turned to her, as if he had expected it and, perhaps, guessed the rest.

She stood in the middle of the floor, as she had stood on her first night in

this room, solemnly composed to the performance of a rite.

"I love you, Roark."

She had said it for the first time.

She saw the reflection of her next words on his face before she had pronounced

them.

"I was married yesterday. To Peter Keating."

It would have been easy, if she had seen a man distorting his mouth to bite off

sound, closing his fists and twisting them in defense against himself. But it

was not easy, because she did not see him doing this, yet knew that this was

being done, without the relief of a physical gesture.

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"Roark..." she whispered, gently, frightened.

He said: "I’m all right." Then he said: "Please wait a moment...All right. Go

on."

"Roark, before I met you, I had always been afraid of seeing someone like you,

because I knew that I’d also have to see what I saw on the witness stand and I’d

have to do what I did in that courtroom. I hated doing it, because it was an

insult to you to defend you--and it was an insult to myself that you had to be

defended....Roark, I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest

for most people: the halfway, the almost, the just-about, the in-between. They

may have their justifications. I don’t know. I don’t care to inquire. I know

that it is the one thing not given me to understand. When I think of what you

are, I can’t accept any reality except a world of your kind. Or at least a world

in which you have a fighting chance and a fight on your own terms. That does not

exist. And I can’t live a life torn between that which exists--and you. It would

mean to struggle against things and men who don’t deserve to be your opponents.

Your fight, using their methods--and that’s too horrible a desecration. It would

mean doing for you what I did for Peter Keating: lie, flatter, evade,

compromise, pander to every ineptitude--in order to beg of them a chance for

you, beg them to let you live, to let you function, to beg them, Roark, not to

laugh at them, but to tremble because they hold the power to hurt you. Am I too

weak because I can’t do this? I don’t know which is the greater strength: to

accept all this for you--or to love you so much that the rest is beyond

acceptance. I don’t know. I love you too much."

He looked at her, waiting. She knew that he had understood this long ago, but

that it had to be said.

"You’re not aware of them. I am. I can’t help it, I love you. The contrast is

too great. Roark, you won’t win, they’ll destroy you, but I won’t be there to

see it happen. I will have destroyed myself first. That’s the only gesture of

protest open to me. What else could I offer you? The things people sacrifice are

so little. I’ll give you my marriage to Peter Keating. I’ll refuse to permit

myself happiness in their world. I’ll take suffering. That will be my answer to

them, and my gift to you. I shall probably never see you again. I shall try not