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in advance and through many channels--that anyone unable to enjoy this play was,

basically, a worthless human being. "It’s no use asking for explanations," he

had said. "Either you’re fine enough to like it or you aren’t."

In the intermission Wynand heard a stout woman saying: "It’s wonderful. I don’t

understand it, but I have the feeling that it’s something very important."

Dominique asked him: "Do you wish to go, Gail?" He said: "No. We’ll stay to the

end."

He was silent in the car on their way home. When they entered their drawing

room, he stood waiting, ready to hear and accept anything. For a moment she felt

the desire to spare him. She felt empty and very tired. She did not want to hurt

him; she wanted to seek his help.

Then she thought again what she had thought in the theater. She thought that

this play was the creation of the Banner, this was what the Banner had forced

into life, had fed, upheld, made to triumph. And it was the Banner that had

begun and ended the destruction of the Stoddard Temple....The New York Banner,

November 2, 1930--"One Small Voice"--"Sacrilege" by Ellsworth M. Toohey--"The

Churches of our Childhood" by Alvah Scarret--"Are you happy, Mr.

Superman?"...And now that destruction was not an event long since past--this was

not a comparison between two mutually unmeasurable entities, a building and a

play--it was not an accident, nor a matter of persons, of Ike, Fougler, Toohey,

herself...and Roark. It was a contest without time, a struggle of two

abstractions, the thing that had created the building against the things that

made the play possible--two forces, suddenly naked to her in their simple

statement--two forces that had fought since the world began--and every religion

had known of them--and there had always been a God and a Devil--only men had

been so mistaken about the shapes of their Devil--he was not single and big, he

was many and smutty and small. The Banner had destroyed the Stoddard Temple in

order to make room for this play--it could not do otherwise--there was no middle

choice, no escape, no neutrality--it was one or the other--it had always

been--and the contest had many symbols, but no name and no statement....Roark,

she heard herself screaming inside, Roark...Roark...Roark...

"Dominique...what’s the matter?"

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She heard Wynand’s voice. It was soft and anxious. He had never allowed himself

to betray anxiety. She grasped the sound as a reflection of her own face, of

what he had seen in her face.

She stood straight, and sure of herself, and very silent inside.

"I’m thinking of you, Gail," she said.

He waited.

"Well, Gail? The total passion for the total height?" She laughed, letting her

arms swing sloppily in the manner of the actors they had seen. "Say, Gail, have

you got a two-cent stamp with a picture of George Washington on it?...How old

are you, Gail? How hard have you worked? Your life is more than half over, but

you’ve seen your reward tonight. Your crowning achievement. Of course, no man is

ever quite equal to his highest passion. Now if you strive and make a great

effort, some day you’ll rise to the level of that play!"

He stood quietly, hearing it, accepting.

"I think you should take a manuscript of that play and place it on a stand in

the center of your gallery downstairs. I think you should rechristen your yacht

and call her No Skin Off Your Nose. I think you should take me--"

"Keep still."

"--and put me in the cast and make me play the role of Mary every evening. Mary

who adopts the homeless muskrat and..."

"Dominique, keep still."

"Then talk. I want to hear you talk."

"I’ve never justified myself to anyone."

"Well, boast then. That would do just as well."

"If you want to hear it, it made me sick, that play. As you knew it would. That

was worse than the Bronx housewife."

"Much worse."

"But I can think of something worse still. Writing a great play and offering it

for tonight’s audience to laugh at. Letting oneself be martyred by the kind of

people we saw frolicking tonight."

He saw that something had reached her; he could not tell whether it was an

answer of surprise or of anger. He did not know how well she recognized these

words. He went on:

"It did make me sick. But so have a great many things which the Banner has done.

It was worse tonight, because there was a quality about it that went beyond the

usual. A special kind of malice. But if this is popular with fools, it’s the

Banner’s legitimate province. The Banner was created for the benefit of fools.

What else do you want me to admit?"

"What you felt tonight."

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"A minor kind of hell. Because you sat there with me. That’s what you wanted,

wasn’t it? To make me feel the contrast. Still, you miscalculated. I looked at

the stage and I thought, this is what people are like, such are their spirits,

but I--I’ve found you, I have you--and the contrast was worth the pain. I did

suffer tonight, as you wanted, but it was a pain that went only down to a

certain point and then..."

"Shut up!" she screamed. "Shut up, God damn you!"

They stood for a moment, both astonished. He moved first; he knew she needed his

help; he grasped her shoulders. She tore herself away. She walked across the

room, to the window; she stood looking at the city, at the great buildings

spread in black and fire below her.

After a while she said, her voice toneless:

"I’m sorry, Gail."

He did not answer.

"I had no right to say those things to you." She did not turn, her arms raised,

holding the frame of the window. "We’re even, Gail. I’m paid back, if that will

make it better for you. I broke first."

"I don’t want you to be paid back." He spoke quietly. "Dominique, what was it?"

"Nothing."

"What did I make you think of? It wasn’t what I said. It was something else.

What did the words mean to you?"

"Nothing."

"A pain that went only down to a certain point. It was that sentence. Why?" She

was looking at the city. In the distance she could see the shaft of the Cord

Building. "Dominique, I’ve seen what you can take. It must be something very

terrible if it could do that to you. I must know. There’s nothing impossible. I

can help you against it, whatever it is." She did not answer. "At the theater,

it was not just that fool play. There was something else for you tonight. I saw

your face. And then it was the same thing again here. What is it?"

"Gail," she said softly, "will you forgive me?"

He let a moment pass; he had not been prepared for that.

"What have I to forgive you?"

"Everything. And tonight."

"That was your privilege. The condition on which you married me. To make me pay

for the Banner."

"I don’t want to make you pay for it."

"Why don’t you want it any more?"

"It can’t be paid for."

In the silence she listened to his steps pacing the room behind her.

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"Dominique. What was it?"

"The pain that stops at a certain point? Nothing. Only that you had no right to

say it. The men who have, pay for that right, a price you can’t afford. But it

doesn’t matter now. Say it if you wish. I have no right to say it either."

"That wasn’t all."

"I think we have a great deal in common, you and I. We’ve committed the same

treason somewhere. No, that’s a bad word....Yes, I think it’s the right word.

It’s the only one that has the feeling of what I mean."

"Dominique, you can’t feel that." His voice sounded strange. She turned to him.

"Why?"

"Because that’s what I felt tonight. Treason."

"Toward whom?"

"I don’t know. If I were religious, I’d say ’God.’ But I’m not religious."

"That’s what I meant, Gail."

"Why should you feel it? The Banner is not your child."

"There are other forms of the same guilt."

Then he walked to her across the long room, he held her in his arms, he said:

"You don’t know the meaning of the kind of words you use. We have a great deal

in common, but not that. I’d rather you went on spitting at me than trying to

share my offenses."

She let her hand rest against the length of his cheek, her fingertips at his

temple.

He asked:

"Will you tell me--now--what it was?"

"Nothing. I undertook more than I could carry. You’re tired, Gail. Why don’t you

go on upstairs? Leave me here for a little while. I just want to look at the

city. Then I’ll join you and I’ll be all right."

9.

DOMINIQUE stood at the rail of the yacht, the deck warm under her flat sandals,

the sun on her bare legs, the wind blowing her thin white dress. She looked at

Wynand stretched in a deck chair before her.

She thought of the change she noticed in him again aboard ship. She had watched

him through the months of their summer cruise. She had seen him once running

down a companionway; the picture remained in her mind; a tall white figure

thrown forward in a streak of speed and confidence; his hand grasped a railing,

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risking deliberately the danger of a sudden break, gaining a new propulsion. He

was not the corrupt publisher of a popular empire. He was an aristocrat aboard a

yacht. He looked, she thought, like what one believes aristocracy to be when one

is young: a brilliant kind of gaiety without guilt.

She looked at him in the deck chair. She thought that relaxation was attractive

only in those for whom it was an unnatural state; then even limpness acquired

purpose. She wondered about him; Gail Wynand, famous for his extraordinary

capacity; but this was not merely the force of an ambitious adventurer who had

created a chain of newspapers; this--the quality she saw in him here--the thing

stretched out under the sun like an answer--this was greater, a first cause, a

faculty out of universal dynamics.

"Gail," she said suddenly, involuntarily.

He opened his eyes to look at her.

"I wish I had taken a recording of that," he said lazily. "You’d be startled to

hear what it sounded like. Quite wasted here. I’d like to play it back in a

bedroom."

"I’ll repeat it there, if you wish."

"Thank you, dearest. And I promise not to exaggerate or presume too much. You’re

not in love with me. You’ve never loved anyone."

"Why do you think that?"

"If you loved a man, it wouldn’t be just a matter of a circus wedding and an

atrocious evening in the theater. You’d put him through total hell."

"How do you know that, Gail?"

"Why have you been staring at me ever since we met? Because I’m not the Gail

Wynand you’d heard about. You see, I love you. And love is exception-making. If

you were in love you’d want to be broken, trampled, ordered, dominated, because

that’s the impossible, the inconceivable for you in your relations with people.

That would be the one gift, the great exception you’d want to offer the man you

loved. But it wouldn’t be easy for you."

"If that’s true, then you..."

"Then I become gentle and humble--to your great astonishment--because I’m the

worst scoundrel living."

"I don’t believe that, Gail."

"No? I’m not the person before last any more?"

"Not any more."

"Well, dearest, as a matter of fact, I am."

"Why do you want to think that?"

"I don’t want to. But I like to be honest. That has been my only private luxury.

Don’t change your mind about me. Go on seeing me as you saw me before we met."

"Gail, that’s not what you want."

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"It doesn’t matter what I want. I don’t want anything--except to own you.

Without any answer from you. It has to be without answer. If you begin to look

at me too closely, you’ll see things you won’t like at all."

"What things?"

"You’re so beautiful, Dominique. It’s such a lovely accident on God’s part that

there’s one person who matches inside and out."

"What things, Gail?"

"Do you know what you’re actually in love with? Integrity. The impossible. The

clean, consistent, reasonable, self-faithful, the all-of-one-style, like a work

of art. That’s the only field where it can be found--art. But you want it in the

flesh. You’re in love with it. Well, you see, I’ve never had any integrity."

"How sure are you of that, Gail?"

"Have you forgotten the Banner?"

"To hell with the Banner."

"All right, to hell with the Banner. It’s nice to hear you say that. But the

Banner’s not the major symptom. That I’ve never practiced any sort of integrity

is not so important. What’s important is that I’ve never felt any need for it. I

hate the conception of it. I hate the presumptuousness of the idea."

"Dwight Carson..." she said. He heard the sound of disgust in her voice.

He laughed. "Yes, Dwight Carson. The man I bought. The individualist who’s

become a mob-glorifier and, incidentally, a dipsomaniac. I did that. That was

worse than the Banner, wasn’t it? You don’t like to be reminded of that?"

"No."

"But surely you’ve heard enough screaming about it. All the giants of the spirit

whom I’ve broken. I don’t think anybody ever realized how much I enjoyed doing

it. It’s a kind of lust. I’m perfectly indifferent to slugs like Ellsworth

Toohey or my friend Alvah, and quite willing to leave them in peace. But just

let me see a man of slightly higher dimension--and I’ve got to make a sort of

Toohey out of him. I’ve got to. It’s like a sex urge."