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that stage, it’s not the object that matters, it’s the desire. Not you, but I.

The ability to desire like that. Nothing less is worth feeling or honoring. And

I’ve never felt that before. Dominique, I’ve never known how to say ’mine’ about

anything. Not in the sense I say it about you. Mine. Did you call it a sense of

life as exaltation? You said that. You understand. I can’t be afraid. I love

you, Dominique--I love you--you’re letting me say it now--I love you."

She reached over and took the cablegram off her mirror. She crumpled it, her

fingers twisting slowly in a grinding motion against her palm. He stood

listening to the crackle of the paper. She leaned forward, opened her hand over

the wastebasket, and let the paper drop. Her hand remained still for a moment,

the fingers extended, slanting down, as they had opened.

Part Four: HOWARD ROARK

1.

THE LEAVES streamed down, trembling in the sun. They were not green; only a few,

scattered through the torrent, stood out in single drops of a green so bright

and pure that it hurt the eyes; the rest were not a color, but a light, the

substance of fire on metal, living sparks without edges. And it looked as if the

forest were a spread of light boiling slowly to produce this color, this green

rising in small bubbles, the condensed essence of spring. The trees met, bending

over the road, and the spots of sun on the ground moved with the shifting of the

branches, like a conscious caress. The young man hoped he would not have to die.

Not if the earth could look like this, he thought. Not if he could hear the hope

and the promise like a voice, with leaves, tree trunks and rocks instead of

words. But he knew that the earth looked like this only because he had seen no

sign of men for hours; he was alone, riding his bicycle down a forgotten trail

through the hills of Pennsylvania where he had never been before, where he could

feel the fresh wonder of an untouched world.

He was a very young man. He had just graduated from college--in this spring of

the year 1935--and he wanted to decide whether life was worth living. He did not

know that this was the question in his mind. He did not think of dying. He

thought only that he wished to find joy and reason and meaning in life--and that

none had been offered to him anywhere.

He had not liked the things taught to him in college. He had been taught a great

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deal about social responsibility, about a life of service and self-sacrifice.

Everybody had said it was beautiful and inspiring. Only he had not felt

inspired. He had felt nothing at all.

He could not name the thing he wanted of life. He felt it here, in this wild

loneliness. But he did not face nature with the joy of a healthy animal--as a

proper and final setting; he faced it with the joy of a healthy man--as a

challenge; as tools, means and material. So he felt anger that he should find

exultation only in the wilderness, that this great sense of hope had to be lost

when he would return to men and men’s work. He thought that this was not right;

that man’s work should be a higher step, an improvement on nature, not a

degradation. He did not want to despise men; he wanted to love and admire them.

But he dreaded the sight of the first house, poolroom and movie poster he would

encounter on his way.

He had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the

thing he sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the

first phrases of Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto--or the last movement of

Rachmaninoff’s Second. Men have not found the words for it nor the deed nor the

thought, but they have found the music. Let me see that in one single act of man

on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the promise of that

music. Not servants nor those served; not altars and immolations; but the final,

the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don’t help me or serve me, but let me see it

once, because I need it. Don’t work for my happiness, my brothers--show me

yours--show me that it is possible--show me your achievement--and the knowledge

will give me courage for mine.

He saw a blue hole ahead, where the road ended on the crest of a ridge. The blue

looked cool and clean like a film of water stretched in the frame of green

branches. It would be funny, he thought, if I came to the edge and found nothing

but that blue beyond; nothing but the sky ahead, above and below. He closed his

eyes and went on, suspending the possible for a moment, granting himself a

dream, a few instants of believing that he would reach the crest, open his eyes

and see the blue radiance of the sky below.

His foot touched the ground, breaking his motion; he stopped and opened his

eyes. He stood still.

In the broad valley, far below him, in the first sunlight of early morning, he

saw a town. Only it was not a town. Towns did not look like that. He had to

suspend the possible for a while longer, to seek no questions or explanations,

only to look.

There were small houses on the ledges of the hill before him, flowing down to

the bottom. He knew that the ledges had not been touched, that no artifice had

altered the unplanned beauty of the graded steps. Yet some power had known how

to build on these ledges in such a way that the houses became inevitable, and

one could no longer imagine the hills as beautiful without them--as if the

centuries and the series of chances that produced these ledges in the struggle

of great blind forces had waited for their final expression, had been only a

road to a goal--and the goal was these buildings, part of the hills, shaped by

the hills, yet ruling them by giving them meaning.

The houses were plain field stone--like the rocks jutting from the green

hillsides--and of glass, great sheets of glass used as if the sun were invited

to complete the structures, sunlight becoming part of the masonry. There were

many houses, they were small, they were cut off from one another, and no two of

them were alike. But they were like variations of a single theme, like a

symphony played by an inexhaustible imagination, and one could still hear the

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laughter of the force that had been let loose on them, as if that force had run,

unrestrained, challenging itself to be spent, but had never reached its end.

Music, he thought, the promise of the music he had invoked, the sense of it made

real--there it was before his eyes--he did not see it--he heard it in chords--he

thought that there was a common language of thought, sight and sound--was it

mathematics?--the discipline of reason--music was mathematics--and architecture

was music in stone--he knew he was dizzy because this place below him could not

be real.

He saw trees, lawns, walks twisting up the hillsides, steps cut in the stone, he

saw fountains, swimming pools, tennis courts--and not a sign of life. The place

was uninhabited.

It did not shock him, not as the sight of it had shocked him. In a way, it

seemed proper; this was not part of known existence. For the moment he had no

desire to know what it was.

After a long time he glanced about him--and then he saw that he was not alone.

Some steps away from him a man sat on a boulder, looking down at the valley. The

man seemed absorbed in the sight and had not heard his approach. The man was

tall and gaunt and had orange hair.

He walked straight to the man, who turned his eyes to him; the eyes were gray

and calm; the boy knew suddenly that they felt the same thing, and he could

speak as he would not speak to a stranger anywhere else.

"That isn’t real, is it?" the boy asked, pointing down.

"Why, yes, it is, now," the man answered.

"It’s not a movie set or a trick of some kind?"

"No. It’s a summer resort. It’s just been completed. It will be opened in a few

weeks."

"Who built it?"

"I did."

"What’s your name?"

"Howard Roark."

"Thank you," said the boy. He knew that the steady eyes looking at him

understood everything these two words had to cover. Howard Roark inclined his

head, in acknowledgment.

Wheeling his bicycle by his side, the boy took the narrow path down the slope of

the hill to the valley and the houses below. Roark looked after him. He had

never seen that boy before and he would never see him again. He did not know

that he had given someone the courage to face a lifetime.

#

Roark had never understood why he was chosen to build the summer resort at

Monadnock Valley.

It had happened a year and a half ago, in the fall of 1933. He had heard of the

project and gone to see Mr. Caleb Bradley, the head of some vast company that

had purchased the valley and was doing a great deal of loud promotion. He went

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to see Bradley as a matter of duty, without hope, merely to add another refusal

to his long list of refusals. He had built nothing in New York since the

Stoddard Temple.

When he entered Bradley’s office, he knew that he must forget Monadnock Valley

because this man would never give it to him. Caleb Bradley was a short, pudgy

person with a handsome face between rounded shoulders. The face looked wise and

boyish, unpleasantly ageless; he could have been fifty or twenty; he had blank

blue eyes, sly and bored.

But it was difficult for Roark to forget Monadnock Valley. So he spoke of it,

forgetting that speech was useless here. Mr. Bradley listened, obviously

interested, but obviously not in what Roark was saying. Roark could almost feel

some third entity present in the room. Mr. Bradley said little, beyond promising

to consider it and to get in touch with him. But then he said a strange thing.

He asked, in a voice devoid of all clue to the purpose of the question, neither

in approval nor scorn: "You’re the architect who built the Stoddard Temple,

aren’t you, Mr. Roark?" "Yes," said Roark. "Funny that I hadn’t thought of you

myself," said Mr. Bradley. Roark went away, thinking that it would have been

funny if Mr. Bradley had thought of him.

Three days later, Bradley telephoned and invited him to his office. Roark came

and met four other men--the Board of the Monadnock Valley Company. They were

well-dressed men, and their faces were as closed as Mr. Bradley’s. "Please tell

these gentlemen what you told me, Mr. Roark," Bradley said pleasantly.

Roark explained his plan. If what they wished to build was an unusual summer

resort for people of moderate incomes--as they had announced--then they should

realize that the worst curse of poverty was the lack of privacy; only the very

rich or the very poor of the city could enjoy their summer vacations; the very

rich, because they had private estates; the very poor, because they did not mind

the feel and smell of one another’s flesh on public beaches and public dance

floors; the people of good taste and small income had no place to go, if they

found no rest or pleasure in herds. Why was it assumed that poverty gave one the

instincts of cattle? Why not offer these people a place where, for a week or a

month, at small cost, they could have what they wanted and needed? He had seen

Monadnock Valley. It could be done. Don’t touch those hillsides, don’t blast and

level them down. Not one huge ant pile of a hotel--but small houses hidden from

one another, each a private estate, where people could meet or not, as they

pleased. Not one fish-market tank of a swimming pool--but many private swimming

pools, as many as the company wished to afford--he could show them how it could

be done cheaply. Not one stock-farm corral of tennis courts for

exhibitionists--but many private tennis courts. Not a place where one went to

meet "refined company" and land a husband in two weeks--but a resort for people

who enjoyed their own presence well enough and sought only a place where they

would be left free to enjoy it.

The men listened to him silently. He saw them exchanging glances once in a

while. He felt certain that they were the kind of glances people exchange when

they cannot laugh at the speaker aloud. But it could not have been that--because

he signed a contract to build the Monadnock Valley summer resort, two days

later.

He demanded Mr. Bradley’s initials on every drawing that came out of his

drafting rooms; he remembered the Stoddard Temple. Mr. Bradley initialed,

signed, okayed; he agreed to everything; he approved everything. He seemed

delighted to let Roark have his way. But this eager complaisance had a peculiar

undertone--as if Mr. Bradley were humoring a child.

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He could learn little about Mr. Bradley. It was said that the man had made a

fortune in real estate, in the Florida boom. His present company seemed to

command unlimited funds, and the names of many wealthy backers were mentioned as

shareholders. Roark never met them. The four gentlemen of the Board did not

appear again, except on short visits to the construction site, where they

exhibited little interest. Mr. Bradley was in full charge of everything--but

beyond a close watch over the budget he seemed to like nothing better than to

leave Roark in full charge.

In the eighteen months that followed, Roark had no time to wonder about Mr.

Bradley. Roark was building his greatest assignment.

For the last year he lived at the construction site, in a shanty hastily thrown

together on a bare hillside, a wooden enclosure with a bed, a stove and a large

table. His old draftsmen came to work for him again, some abandoning better jobs

in the city, to live in shacks and tents, to work in naked plank barracks that

served as architect’s office. There was so much to build that none of them

thought of wasting structural effort on their own shelters. They did not

realize, until much later, that they had lacked comforts; and then they did not

believe it--because the year at Monadnock Valley remained in their minds as the

strange time when the earth stopped turning and they lived through twelve months