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thinking that this place was now her home and how right it looked to be her

home.

He watched her. He showed no desire to speak or touch her, only to observe her

here, in his house, brought here, lifted high over the city; as if the

significance of the moment were not to be shared, not even with her.

She moved slowly across the room, took off her hat, leaned against the edge of a

table. She wondered why her normal desire to say little, to hold things closed,

broke down before him, why she felt compelled to simple frankness, such as she

could offer no one else.

"You’ve had your way after all, Gail. You were married as you wanted to be

married."

"Yes, I think so."

"It was useless to try to torture you."

"Actually, yes. But I didn’t mind it too much."

"You didn’t?"

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"No. If that’s what you wanted it was only a matter of keeping my promise."

"But you hated it, Gail."

"Utterly. What of it? Only the first moment was hard--when you said it in the

car. Afterward, I was rather glad of it." He spoke quietly, matching her

frankness; she knew he would leave her the choice--he would follow her

manner--he would keep silent or admit anything she wished to be admitted.

"Why?"

"Didn’t you notice your own mistake--if it was a mistake? You wouldn’t have

wanted to make me suffer if you were completely indifferent to me."

"No. It was not a mistake."

"You’re a good loser, Dominique."

"I think that’s also contagion from you, Gail. And there’s something I want to

thank you for."

"What?"

"That you barred our wedding from the Wynand papers." He looked at her, his eyes

alert in a special way for a moment, then he smiled.

"It’s out of character--your thanking me for that."

"It was out of character for you to do it."

"I had to. But I thought you’d be angry."

"I should have been. But I wasn’t. I’m not. I thank you."

"Can one feel gratitude for gratitude? It’s a little hard to express, but that’s

what I feel, Dominique."

She looked at the soft light on the walls around her. That lighting was part of

the room, giving the walls a special texture of more than material or color. She

thought that there were other rooms beyond these walls, rooms she had never seen

which were hers now. And she found that she wanted them to be hers.

"Gail, I haven’t asked you what we are to do now. Are we going away? Are we

having a honeymoon? Funny, I haven’t even wondered about it. I thought of the

wedding and nothing beyond. As if it stopped there and you took over from then

on. Also out of character, Gail."

"But not in my favor, this time. Passivity is not a good sign. Not for you."

"It might be--if I’m glad of it."

"Might. Though it won’t last. No, we’re not going anywhere. Unless you wish to

go."

"No."

"Then we stay here. Another peculiar manner of making an exception. The proper

manner for you and me. Going away has always been running--for both of us. This

time, we don’t run."

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"Yes, Gail."

When he held her and kissed her, her arm lay bent, pressed between her body and

his, her hand at her shoulder--and she felt her cheek touching the faded jasmine

bouquet on her wrist, its perfume still intact, still a delicate suggestion of

spring.

When she entered his bedroom, she found that it was not the place she had seen

photographed in countless magazines. The glass cage had been demolished. The

room built in its place was a solid vault without a single window. It was

lighted and air-conditioned, but neither light nor air came from the outside.

She lay in his bed and she pressed her palms to the cold, smooth sheet at her

sides, not to let her arms move and touch him. But her rigid indifference did

not drive him to helpless anger. He understood. He laughed. She heard him

say--his voice rough, without consideration, amused--"It won’t do, Dominique."

And she knew that this barrier would not be held between them, that she had no

power to hold it. She felt the answer in her body, an answer of hunger, of

acceptance, of pleasure. She thought that it was not a matter of desire, not

even a matter of the sexual act, but only that man was the life force and woman

could respond to nothing else; that this man had the will of life, the prime

power, and this act was only its simplest statement, and she was responding not

to the act nor to the man, but to that force within him.

#

"Well?" asked Ellsworth Toohey. "Now do you get the point?"

He stood leaning informally against the back of Scarret’s chair, and Scarret sat

staring down at a hamper full of mail by the side of his desk.

"Thousands," sighed Scarret, "thousands, Ellsworth. You ought to see what they

call him. Why didn’t he print the story of his wedding? What’s he ashamed of?

What’s he got to hide? Why didn’t he get married in church, like any decent man?

How could he marry a divorcee? That’s what they’re all asking. Thousands. And he

won’t even look at the letters. Gail Wynand, the man they called the seismograph

of public opinion."

"That’s right," said Toohey. "That kind of a man."

"Here’s a sample," Scarret picked up a letter from his desk and read aloud:

"’I’m a respectable woman and mother of five children and I certainly don’t

think I want to bring up my children with your newspaper. Have taken same for

fourteen years, but now that you show that you’re the kind of man that has no

decency and making a mockery of the holy institution of marriage which is to

commit adultery with a fallen woman also another man’s wife who gets married in

a black dress as she jolly well ought to, I won’t read your newspaper any more

as you’re not a man fit for children, and I’m certainly disappointed in you.

Very truly yours. Mrs. Thomas Parker.’ I read it to him. He just laughed."

"Uh-huh," said Toohey.

"What’s got into him?"

"It’s nothing that got into him, Alvah. It’s something that got out at last."

"By the way, did you know that many papers dug up their old pictures of

Dominique’s nude statue from that goddamn temple and ran it right with the

wedding story--to show Mrs. Wynand’s interest in art, the bastards! Are they

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glad to get back at Gail! Are they giving it to him, the lice! Wonder who

reminded them of that one."

"I wouldn’t know."

"Well, of course, it’s just one of those storms in a teacup. They’ll forget all

about it in a few weeks. I don’t think it will do much harm."

"No. Not this incident alone. Not by itself."

"Huh? Are you predicting something?"

"Those letters predict it, Alvah. Not the letters as such. But that he wouldn’t

read them."

"Oh, it’s no use getting too silly either. Gail knows where to stop and when.

Don’t make a mountain out of a mo--" He glanced up at Toohey and his voice

switched to: "Christ, yes, Ellsworth, you’re right. What are we going to do?"

"Nothing, my friend, nothing. Not for a long time yet." Toohey sat down on the

edge of Scarret’s desk and let the tip of his pointed shoe play among the

envelopes in the hamper, tossing them up, making them rustle. He had acquired a

pleasant habit of dropping in and out of Scarret’s office at all hours. Scarret

had come to depend on him.

"Say, Ellsworth," Scarret asked suddenly, "are you really loyal to the Banner!"

"Alvah, don’t talk in dialect. Nobody’s really that stuffy,"

"No, I mean it....Well, you know what I mean."

"Haven’t the faintest idea. Who’s ever disloyal to his bread and butter?"

"Yeah, that’s so....Still, you know, Ellsworth, I like you a lot, only I’m never

sure when you’re just talking my language or when it’s really yours."

"Don’t go getting yourself into psychological complexities. You’ll get all

tangled up. What’s on your mind?"

"Why do you still write for the New Frontiers!"

"For money."

"Oh, come, that’s chicken feed to you."

"Well, it’s a prestige magazine. Why shouldn’t I write for them? You haven’t got

an exclusive on me."

"No, and I don’t care who you write for on the side. But the New Frontiers has

been damn funny lately."

"About what?"

"About Gail Wynand."

"Oh, rubbish, Alvah!"

"No sir, this isn’t rubbish. You just haven’t noticed, guess you don’t read it

close enough, but I’ve got an instinct about things like that and I know. I know

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when it’s just some smart young punk taking potshots or when a magazine means

business."

"You’re nervous, Alvah, and you’re exaggerating. The New Frontiers is a liberal

magazine and they’ve always sniped at Gail Wynand. Everybody has. He’s never

been any too popular in the trade, you know. Hasn’t hurt him, though, has it?"

"This is different. I don’t like it when there’s a system behind it, a kind of

special purpose, like a lot of little trickles dribbling along, all innocently,

and pretty soon they make a little stream, and it all fits pat, and pretty

soon..."

"Getting a persecution mania, Alvah?"

"I don’t like it. It was all right when people took cracks at his yachts and

women and a few municipal election scandals--which were never proved," he added

hastily. "But I don’t like it when it’s that new intelligentsia slang that

people seem to be going for nowadays: Gail Wynand, the exploiter, Gail Wynand,

the pirate of capitalism, Gail Wynand, the disease of an era. It’s still crap,

Ellsworth, only there’s dynamite in that kind of crap."

"It’s just the modern way of saying the same old things, nothing more. Besides,

I can’t be responsible for the policy of a magazine just because I sell them an

article once in a while."

"Yeah, but...That’s not what I hear."

"What do you hear?"

"I hear you’re financing the damn thing."

"Who, me? With what?"

"Well, not you yourself exactly. But I hear it was you who got young Ronny

Pickering, the booze hound, to give them a shot in the arm to the tune of one

hundred thousand smackers, just about when New Frontiers was going the way of

all frontiers."

"Hell, that was just to save Ronny from the town’s more expensive gutters. The

kid was going to the dogs. Gave him a sort of higher purpose in life. And put

one hundred thousand smackers to better use than the chorus cuties who’d have

got it out of him anyway."

"Yeah, but you could’ve attached a little string to the gift, slipped word to

the editors that they’d better lay off Gail or else."

"The New Frontiers is not the Banner, Alvah. It’s a magazine of principles. One

doesn’t attach strings to its editors and one doesn’t tell them ’or else.’"

"In this game, Ellsworth? Whom are you kidding?"

"Well, if it will set your mind at rest, I’ll tell you something you haven’t

heard. It’s not supposed to be known--it was done through a lot of proxies. Did

you know that I just got Mitchell Layton to buy a nice fat chunk of the Banner?"

"No!"

"Yes."

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"Christ, Ellsworth, that’s great! Mitchell Layton? We can use a reservoir like

that and...Wait a minute. Mitchell Layton?"

"Yes. What’s wrong with Mitchell Layton?"

"Isn’t he the little boy who couldn’t digest grandpaw’s money?"

"Grandpaw left him an awful lot of money."

"Yeah, but he’s a crackpot. He’s the one who’s been a Yogi, then a vegetarian,

then a Unitarian, then a nudist--and now he’s gone to build a palace of the

proletariat in Moscow."

"So what?"

"But Jesus!--a Red among our stockholders?"

"Mitch isn’t a Red. How can one be a Red with a quarter of a billion dollars?

He’s just a pale tea-rose. Mostly yellow. But a nice kid at heart."

"But--on the Banner!"

"Alvah, you’re an ass. Don’t you see? I’ve made him put some dough into a good,

solid, conservative paper. That’ll cure him of his pink notions and set him in

the right direction. Besides, what harm can he do? Your dear Gail controls his

papers, doesn’t he?"

"Does Gail know about this?"

"No. Dear Gail hasn’t been as watchful in the last five years as he used to be.

And you’d better not tell him. You see the way Gail’s going. He’ll need a little

pressure. And you’ll need the dough. Be nice to Mitch Layton. He can come in

handy."

"That’s so."

"It is. You see? My heart’s in the right place. I’ve helped a puny little

liberal mag like the New Frontiers, but I’ve also brought a much more

substantial hunk of cash to a big stronghold of arch-conservatism such as the

New York Banner."

"So you have. Damn decent of you, too, considering that you’re a kind of radical

yourself."

"Now are you going to talk about any disloyalty?"

"Guess not. Guess you’ll stand by the old Banner."

"Of course I will. Why, I love the Banner. I’d do anything for it. Why, I’d give

my life for the New York Banner."

8.

WALKING the soil of a desert island holds one anchored to the rest of the earth;

but in their penthouse, with the telephone disconnected, Wynand and Dominique

had no feeling of the fifty-seven floors below them, of steel shafts braced

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against granite--and it seemed to them that their home was anchored in space,

not an island, but a planet. The city became a friendly sight, an abstraction

with which no possible communication could be established, like the sky, a