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as narrow-minded as the hidebound conservatives who demanded that we employ

nothing but historical styles. I do not apologize for those of my buildings

which were designed in the Classical tradition. They were an answer to the need

of their era. Neither do I apologize for the buildings which I designed in the

modern style. They represent the coming better world. It is my opinion that in

the humble realization of this principle lies the reward and the joy of being an

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architect."

There was gratifying publicity, and many flattering comments of envy in

professional circles, when the news of Peter Keating’s selection to build

Stoneridge was made public. He tried to recapture his old pleasure in such

manifestations. He failed. He still felt something that resembled gladness, but

it was faded and thin.

The effort of designing Stoneridge seemed a load too vast to lift. He did not

mind the circumstances through which he had obtained it; that, too, had become

pale and weightless in his mind, accepted and almost forgotten. He simply could

not face the task of designing the great number of houses that Stoneridge

required. He felt very tired. He felt tired when he awakened in the morning, and

he found himself waiting all day for the time when he would be able to go back

to bed.

He turned Stoneridge over to Neil Dumont and Bennett. "Go ahead," he said

wearily, "do what you want."

"What style, Pete?" Dumont asked. "Oh, make it some sort of period--the small

home owners won’t go for it otherwise. But trim it down a little--for the press

comments. Give it historical touches and a modern feeling. Any way you wish. I

don’t care."

Dumont and Bennett went ahead. Keating changed a few roof lines on their

sketches, a few windows. The preliminary drawings were approved by Wynand’s

office. Keating did not know whether Wynand had approved in person. He did not

see Wynand again.

Dominique had been away a month, when Guy Francon announced his retirement.

Keating had told him about the divorce, offering no explanation. Francon had

taken the news calmly. He had said: "I expected it. It’s all right, Peter. It’s

probably not your fault nor hers." He had not mentioned it since. Now he gave no

explanation of his retirement, only: "I told you it was coming, long ago. I’m

tired. Good luck, Peter."

The responsibility of the firm on his lonely shoulders and the prospect of his

solitary name on the office door left Keating uneasy. He needed a partner. He

chose Neil Dumont. Neil had grace and distinction. He was another Lucius Heyer.

The firm became Peter Keating & Cornelius Dumont. Some sort of drunken

celebration of the event was held by a few friends, but Keating did not attend

it. He had promised to attend, but he forgot about it, went for a solitary

weekend in the snowbound country, and did not remember the celebration until the

morning after it was held, when he was walking alone down a frozen country road.

Stoneridge was the last contract signed by the firm of Francon & Keating.

7.

WHEN Dominique stepped off the train in New York, Wynand was there to meet her.

She had not written to him nor heard from him during the weeks of her residence

in Reno; she had notified no one of her return. But his figure standing on the

platform, standing calmly, with an air of finality, told her that he had kept in

touch with her lawyers, had followed every step of the divorce proceedings, had

known the date when the decree was granted, the hour when she took the train and

the number of her compartment.

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He did not move forward when he saw her. It was she who walked to him, because

she knew that he wanted to see her walking, if only the short space between

them. She did not smile, but her face had the lovely serenity that can become a

smile without transition.

"Hello, Gail."

"Hello, Dominique."

She had not thought of him in his absence, not sharply, not with a personal

feeling of his reality, but now she felt an immediate recognition, a sense of

reunion with someone known and needed.

He said: "Give me your baggage checks, I’ll have it attended to later; my car is

outside."

She handed him the checks and he slipped them into his pocket. They knew they

must turn and walk up the platform to the exit, but the decisions both had made

in advance broke down in the same instant, because they did not turn, but

remained standing, looking at each other.

He made the first effort to correct the breach. He smiled lightly.

"If I had the right to say it, I’d say that I couldn’t have endured the waiting

had I known that you’d look as you do. But since I have no such right, I’m not

going to say it."

She laughed. "All right, Gail. That was a form of pretense, too--our being too

casual. It makes things more important, not less, doesn’t it? Let’s say whatever

we wish."

"I love you," he said, his voice expressionless, as if the words were a

statement of pain and not addressed to her.

"I’m glad to be back with you, Gail. I didn’t know I would be, but I’m glad."

"In what way, Dominique?"

"I don’t know. In a way of contagion from you, I think. In a way of finality and

peace."

Then they noticed that this was said in the middle of a crowded platform, with

people and baggage racks hurrying past.

They walked out to the street, to his car. She did not ask where they were

going; and did not care. She sat silently beside him. She felt divided, most of

her swept by a wish not to resist, and a small part of her left to wonder about

it. She felt a desire to let him carry her--a feeling of confidence without

appraisal, not a happy confidence, but confidence. After a while, she noticed

that her hand lay in his, the length of her gloved fingers held to the length of

his, only the spot of her bare wrist pressed to his skin. She had not noticed

him take her hand; it seemed so natural and what she had wanted from the moment

of seeing him. But she could not allow herself to want it.

"Where are we going, Gail?" she asked.

"To get the license. Then to the judge’s office. To be married."

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She sat up slowly, turning to face him. She did not withdraw her hand, but her

fingers became rigid, conscious, taken away from him.

"No," she said.

She smiled and held the smile too long, in deliberate, fixed precision. He

looked at her calmly.

"I want a real wedding, Gail. I want it at the most ostentatious hotel in town.

I want engraved invitations, guests, mobs of guests, celebrities, flowers, flash

bulbs and newsreel cameras. I want the kind of wedding the public expects of

Gail Wynand."

He released her fingers, simply, without resentment. He looked abstracted for a

moment, as if he were calculating a problem in arithmetic, not too difficult.

Then he said:

"All right. That will take a week to arrange. I could have it done tonight, but

if it’s engraved invitations, we must give the guests a week’s notice at the

least. Otherwise it would look abnormal and you want a normal Gail Wynand

wedding. I’ll have to take you to a hotel now, where you can live for a week. I

had not planned for this, so I’ve made no reservations. Where would you like to

stay?"

"At your penthouse."

"No."

"The Nordland, then."

He leaned forward and said to the chauffeur:

"The Nordland, John."

In the lobby of the hotel, he said to her:

"I will see you a week from today, Tuesday, at the Noyes-Belmont, at four

o’clock in the afternoon. The invitations will have to be in the name of your

father. Let him know that I’ll get in touch with him. I’ll attend to the rest."

He bowed, his manner unchanged, his calm still holding the same peculiar quality

made of two things: the mature control of a man so certain of his capacity for

control that it could seem casual, and a childlike simplicity of accepting

events as if they were subject to no possible change.

She did not see him during that week. She found herself waiting impatiently.

She saw him again when she stood beside him, facing a judge who pronounced the

words of the marriage ceremony over the silence of six hundred people in the

floodlighted ballroom of the Noyes-Belmont Hotel.

The background she had wished was set so perfectly that it became its own

caricature, not a specific society wedding, but an impersonal prototype of

lavish, exquisite vulgarity. He had understood her wish and obeyed scrupulously;

he had refused himself the relief of exaggeration, he had not staged the event

crudely, but made it beautiful in the exact manner Gail Wynand, the publisher,

would have chosen had he wished to be married in public. But Gail Wynand did not

wish to be married in public.

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He made himself fit the setting, as if he were part of the bargain, subject to

the same style. When he entered, she saw him looking at the mob of guests as if

he did not realize that such a mob was appropriate to a Grand Opera premiere or

a royal rummage sale, not to the solemn climax of his life. He looked correct,

incomparably distinguished.

Then she stood with him, the mob becoming a heavy silence and a gluttonous stare

behind him, and they faced the judge together. She wore a long, black dress with

a bouquet of fresh jasmine, his present, attached by a black band to her wrist.

Her face in the halo of a black lace hat was raised to the judge who spoke

slowly, letting his words hang one by one in the air.

She glanced at Wynand. He was not looking at her nor at the judge. Then she saw

that he was alone in that room. He held this moment and he made of it, of the

glare, of the vulgarity, a silent height of his own. He had not wished a

religious ceremony, which he did not respect, and he could have less respect for

the state’s functionary reciting a formula before him--but he made the rite an

act of pure religion. She thought, if she were being married to Roark in such a

setting, Roark would stand like this.

Afterward, the mockery of the monster reception that followed left him immune.

He posed with her for the battery of press cameras and he complied gracefully

with all the demands of the reporters, a special, noisier mob within the mob. He

stood with her in the receiving line, shaking an assembly belt of hands that

unrolled past them for hours. He looked untouched by the lights, the haystacks

of Easter lilies, the sounds of a string orchestra, the river of people flowing

on and breaking into a delta when it reached the champagne; untouched by these

guests who had come here driven by boredom, by an envious hatred, a reluctant

submission to an invitation bearing his dangerous name, a scandal-hungry

curiosity. He looked as if he did not know that they took his public immolation

as their rightful due, that they considered their presence as the indispensable

seal of sacrament upon the occasion, that of all the hundreds he and his bride

were the only ones to whom the performance was hideous.

She watched him intently. She wanted to see him take pleasure in all this, if

only for a moment. Let him accept and join, just once, she thought, let him show

the soul of the New York Banner in its proper element. She saw no acceptance.

She saw a hint of pain, at times; but even the pain did not reach him

completely. And she thought of the only other man she knew who had spoken about

suffering that went down only to a certain point.

When the last congratulations had drifted past them, they were free to leave by

the rules of the occasion. But he made no move to leave. She knew he was waiting

for her decision. She walked away from him into the currents of guests; she

smiled, bowed and listened to offensive nonsense, a glass of champagne in her

hand.

She saw her father in the throng. He looked proud and wistful; he seemed

bewildered. He had taken the announcement of her marriage quietly; he had said:

"I want you to be happy, Dominique. I want it very much. I hope he’s the right

man." His tone had said that he was not certain.

She saw Ellsworth Toohey in the crowd. He noticed her looking at him and turned

away quickly. She wanted to laugh aloud; but the matter of Ellsworth Toohey

caught off guard did not seem important enough to laugh about now.

Alvah Scarret pushed his way toward her. He was making a poor effort at a

suitable expression, but his face looked hurt and sullen. He muttered something

rapid about his wishes for her happiness, but then he said distinctly and with a

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lively anger:

"But why, Dominique? Why?"

She could not quite believe that Alvah Scarret would permit himself the

crudeness of what the question seemed to mean. She asked coldly:

"What are you talking about, Alvah?"

"The veto, of course."

"What veto?"

"You know very well what veto. Now I ask you, with every sheet in the city here,

every damn one of them, the lousiest tabloid included, and the wire services

too--everything but the Banner! Everything but the Wynand papers! What am I to

tell people? How am I to explain? Is that a thing for you to do to a former

comrade of the trade?"

"You’d better repeat that, Alvah."

"You mean you didn’t know that Gail wouldn’t allow a single one of our guys

here? That we won’t have any stories tomorrow, not a spread, not a picture,

nothing but two lines on page eighteen?"

"No," she said, "I didn’t know it."

He wondered at the sudden jerk of her movement as she turned away from him. She

handed the champagne glass to the first stranger in sight, whom she mistook for

a waiter. She made her way through the crowd to Wynand.

"Let’s go, Gail."

"Yes, my dear."

She stood, incredulously, in the middle of the drawing room of his penthouse,