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"Why?"

"I don’t know."

"Incidentally, you misunderstand Ellsworth Toohey."

"Possibly. You don’t expect me to waste mental effort to untangle that snail’s

shell?"

"And you contradict yourself."

"Where?"

"Why didn’t you set out to destroy me?"

"The exception-making, Dominique. I love you. I had to love you. God help you if

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you were a man."

"Gail--why?"

"Why have I done all that?"

"Yes."

"Power, Dominique. The only thing I ever wanted. To know that there’s not a man

living whom I can’t force to do--anything. Anything I choose. The man I couldn’t

break would destroy me. But I’ve spent years finding out how safe I am. They say

I have no sense of honor, I’ve missed something in life. Well, I haven’t missed

very much, have I? The thing I’ve missed--it doesn’t exist."

He spoke in a normal tone of voice, but he noticed suddenly that she was

listening with the intent concentration needed to hear a whisper of which one

can afford to lose no syllable.

"What’s the matter, Dominique? What are you thinking about?"

"I’m listening to you, Gail."

She did not say she was listening to his words and to the reason behind them. It

was suddenly so clear to her that she heard it as an added clause to each

sentence, even though he had no knowledge of what he was confessing.

"The worst thing about dishonest people is what they think of as honesty," he

said. "I know a woman who’s never held to one conviction for three days running,

but when I told her she had no integrity, she got very tight-lipped and said her

idea of integrity wasn’t mine; it seems she’d never stolen any money. Well,

she’s one that’s in no danger from me whatever. I don’t hate her. I hate the

impossible conception you love so passionately, Dominique."

"Do you?"

"I’ve had a lot of fun proving it."

She walked to him and sat down on the deck beside his chair, the planks smooth

and hot under her bare legs. He wondered why she looked at him so gently. He

frowned. She knew that some reflection of what she had understood remained in

her eyes--and she looked away from him.

"Gail, why tell me all that? It’s not what you want me to think of you."

"No. It isn’t. Why tell you now? Want the truth? Because it has to be told.

Because I want to be honest with you. Only with you and with myself. But I

wouldn’t have the courage to tell you anywhere else. Not at home. Not ashore.

Only here--because here it doesn’t seem quite real. Does it?"

"No."

"I think I hoped that here you’d accept it--and still think of me as you did

when you spoke my name in that way I wanted to record."

She put her head against his chair, her face pressed to his knees, her hand

dropped, fingers half-curled, on the glistening planks of the deck. She did not

want to show what she had actually heard him saying about himself today.

#

441

On a night of late fall they stood together at the roof-garden parapet, looking

at the city. The long shafts made of lighted windows were like streams breaking

out of the black sky, flowing down in single drops to feed the great pool of

fire below.

"There they are, Dominique--the great buildings. The skyscrapers. Do you

remember? They were the first link between us. We’re both in love with them, you

and I."

She thought she should resent his right to say it. But she felt no resentment.

"Yes, Gail. I’m in love with them."

She looked at the vertical threads of light that were the Cord Building, she

raised her fingers off the parapet, just enough to touch the place of its unseen

form on the distant sky. She felt no reproach from it.

"I like to see a man standing at the foot of a skyscraper," he said. "It makes

him no bigger than an ant--isn’t that the correct bromide for the occasion? The

God-damn fools! It’s man who made it--the whole incredible mass of stone and

steel. It doesn’t dwarf him, it makes him greater than the structure. It reveals

his true dimensions to the world. What we love about these buildings, Dominique,

is the creative faculty, the heroic in man."

"Do you love the heroic in man, Gail?"

"I love to think of it. I don’t believe it."

She leaned against the parapet and watched the green lights stretched in a long

straight line far below. She said:

"I wish I could understand you."

"I thought I should be quite obvious. I’ve never hidden anything from you."

He watched the electric signs that flashed in disciplined spasms over the black

river. Then he pointed to a blurred light, far to the south, a faint reflection

of blue.

"That’s the Banner Building. See, over there?--that blue light. I’ve done so

many things, but I’ve missed one, the most important. There’s no Wynand Building

in New York. Some day I’ll build a new home for the Banner. It will be the

greatest structure of the city and it will bear my name. I started in a

miserable dump, and the paper was called the Gazette. I was only a stooge for

some very filthy people. But I thought, then, of the Wynand Building that would

rise some day. I’ve thought of it all the years since."

"Why haven’t you built it?"

"I wasn’t ready for it."

"Why?"

"I’m not ready for it now. I don’t know why. I know only that it’s very

important to me. It will be the final symbol. I’ll know the right time when it

comes."

He turned to look out to the west, to a path of dim scattered lights. He

pointed:

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"That’s where I was born. Hell’s Kitchen." She listened attentively; he seldom

spoke of his beginning. "I was sixteen when I stood on a roof and looked at the

city, like tonight. And decided what I would be."

The quality of his voice became a line underscoring the moment, saying: Take

notice, this is important. Not looking at him, she thought this was what he had

waited for, this should give her the answer, the key to him. Years ago, thinking

of Gail Wynand, she had wondered how such a man faced his life and his work; she

expected boasting and a hidden sense of shame, or impertinence flaunting its own

guilt. She looked at him. His head lifted, his eyes level on the sky before him,

he conveyed none of the things she had expected; he conveyed a quality

incredible in this connection: a sense of gallantry.

She knew it was a key, but it made the puzzle greater. Yet something within her

understood, knew the use of that key and made her speak.

"Gail, fire Ellsworth Toohey."

He turned to her, bewildered.

"Why?"

"Gail, listen." Her voice had an urgency she had never shown in speaking to him.

"I’ve never wanted to stop Toohey. I’ve even helped him. I thought he was what

the world deserved. I haven’t tried to save anything from him...or anyone. I

never thought it would be the Banner--the Banner which he fits best--that I’d

want to save from him."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"Gail, when I married you, I didn’t know I’d come to feel this kind of loyalty

to you. It contradicts everything I’ve done, it contradicts so much more than I

can tell you--it’s a sort of catastrophe for me, a turning point--don’t ask me

why--it will take me years to understand--I know only that this is what I owe

you. Fire Ellsworth Toohey. Get him out before it’s too late. You’ve broken many

much less vicious men and much less dangerous. Fire Toohey, go after him and

don’t rest until you’ve destroyed every last bit of him."

"Why? Why should you think of him just now?"

"Because I know what he’s after."

"What is he after?"

"Control of the Wynand papers."

He laughed aloud; it was not derision or indignation; just pure gaiety greeting

the point of a silly joke.

"Gail..." she said helplessly.

"Oh for God’s sake, Dominique! And here I’ve always respected your judgment."

"You’ve never understood Toohey."

"And I don’t care to. Can you see me going after Ellsworth Toohey? A tank to

eliminate a bedbug? Why should I fire Elsie? He’s the kind that makes money for

me. People love to read his twaddle. I don’t fire good booby-traps like that.

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He’s as valuable to me as a piece of flypaper."

"That’s the danger. Part of it."

"His wonderful following? I’ve had bigger and better sob-sisters on my payroll.

When a few of them had to be kicked out, that was the end of them. Their

popularity stopped at the door of the Banner. But the Banner went on."

"It’s not his popularity. It’s the special nature of it. You can’t fight him on

his terms. You’re only a tank--and that’s a very clean, innocent weapon. An

honest weapon that goes first, out in front, and mows everything down or takes

every counterblow. He’s a corrosive gas. The kind that eats lungs out. I think

there really is a secret to the core of evil and he has it. I don’t know what it

is. I know how he uses it and what he’s after."

"Control of the Wynand papers?"

"Control of the Wynand papers--as one of the means to an end."

"What end?"

"Control of the world."

He said with patient disgust: "What is this, Dominique? What sort of gag and

what for?"

"I’m serious, Gail. I’m terribly serious."

"Control of the world, my dear, belongs to men like me. The Tooheys of this

earth wouldn’t know how to dream about it."

"I’ll try to explain. It’s very difficult. The hardest thing to explain is the

glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see. But if you’ll

listen..."

"I won’t listen. You’ll forgive me, but discussing the idea of Ellsworth Toohey

as a threat to me is ridiculous. Discussing it seriously is offensive."

"Gail, I..."

"No. Darling, I don’t think you really understand much about the Banner. And I

don’t want you to. I don’t want you to take any part in it. Forget it. Leave the

Banner to me."

"Is it a demand, Gail?"

"It’s an ultimatum."

"All right."

"Forget it. Don’t go acquiring horror complexes about anyone as big as Ellsworth

Toohey. It’s not like you."

"All right, Gail. Let’s go in. It’s too cold for you here without an overcoat."

He chuckled softly--it was the kind of concern she had never shown for him

before. He took her hand and kissed her palm, holding it against his face.

#

444

For many weeks, when left alone together, they spoke little and never about each

other. But it was not a silence of resentment; it was the silence of an

understanding too delicate to limit by words. They would be in a room together

in the evening, saying nothing, content to feel each other’s presence. They

would look at each other suddenly--and both would smile, the smile like hands

clasped.

Then, one evening, she knew he would speak. She sat at her dressing-table. He

came in and stood leaning against the wall beside her. He looked at her hands,

at her naked shoulders, but she felt as if he did not see her; he was looking at

something greater than the beauty of her body, greater than his love for her; he

was looking at himself--and this, she knew, was the one incomparable tribute.

"I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival...I’ve

given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need..." She

heard Roark’s words, Roark’s voice speaking for Gail Wynand--and she felt no

sense of treason to Roark in using the words of his love for the love of another

man.

"Gail," she said gently, "some day I’ll have to ask your forgiveness for having

married you."

He shook his head slowly, smiling. She said:

"I wanted you to be my chain to the world. You’ve become my defense, instead.

And that makes my marriage dishonest."

"No. I told you I would accept any reason you chose."

"But you’ve changed everything for me. Or was it I that changed it? I don’t

know. We’ve done something strange to each other. I’ve given you what I wanted

to lose. That special sense of living I thought this marriage would destroy for

me. The sense of life as exaltation. And you--you’ve done all the things I would

have done. Do you know how much alike we are?"

"I knew that from the first."

"But it should have been impossible. Gail, I want to remain with you now--for

another reason. To wait for an answer. I think when I learn to understand what

you are, I’ll understand myself. There is an answer. There is a name for the

thing we have in common. I don’t know it. I know it’s very important."

"Probably. I suppose I should want to understand it. But I don’t. I can’t care

about anything now. I can’t even be afraid."

She looked up at him and said very calmly:

"I am afraid, Gail."

"Of what, dearest?"

"Of what I’m doing to you."

"Why?"

"I don’t love you, Gail."

"I can’t care even about that."

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She dropped her head and he looked down at the hair that was like a pale helmet

of polished metal.

"Dominique."

She raised her face to him obediently.

"I love you, Dominique. I love you so much that nothing can matter to me--not

even you. Can you understand that? Only my love--not your answer. Not even your

indifference. I’ve never taken much from the world. I haven’t wanted much. I’ve

never really wanted anything. Not in the total, undivided way, not with the kind

of desire that becomes an ultimatum, ’yes’ or ’no,’ and one can’t accept the

’no’ without ceasing to exist. That’s what you are to me. But when one reaches