VI
ROGER ENRIGHT HAD STARTED LIFE AS A COAL MINER IN PENNSYLVANIA. On his way to the millions he now owned, no one had ever helped him. “That,” he explained, “is why no one has ever stood in my way.” A great many things and people had stood in his way, however; but he had never noticed them. Many incidents of his long career were not admired; none was whispered about. His career had been glaring and public like a billboard. He made a poor subject for blackmailers or debunking biographers. Among the wealthy he was disliked for having become wealthy so crudely.
He hated bankers, labor unions, women, evangelists and the stock exchange. He had never bought a share of stock nor sold a share in any of his enterprises, and he owned his fortune singlehanded, as simply as if he carried all his cash in his pocket. Beside his oil business he owned a publishing house, a restaurant, a radio shop, a garage, a plant manufacturing electric refrigerators. Before each new venture he studied the field for a long time, then proceeded to act as if he had never heard of it, upsetting all precedent. Some of his ventures were successful, others failed. He continued running them all with ferocious energy. He worked twelve hours a day.
When he decided to erect a building, he spent six months looking for an architect. Then he hired Roark at the end of their first interview, which lasted half an hour. Later, when the drawings were made, he gave orders to proceed with construction at once. When Roark began to speak about the drawings, Enright interrupted him: “Don’t explain. It’s no use explaining abstract ideals to me. I’ve never had any ideals. People say I’m completely immoral. I go only by what I like. But I do know what I like.”
Roark never mentioned the attempt he had made to reach Enright, nor his interview with the bored secretary. Enright learned of it somehow. Within five minutes the secretary was discharged, and within ten minutes he was walking out of the office, as ordered, in the middle of a busy day, a letter left half typed in his machine.
Roark reopened his office, the same big room on the top of an old building. He enlarged it by the addition of an adjoining room—for the draftsmen he hired in order to keep up with the planned lightning schedule of construction. The draftsmen were young and without much experience. He had never heard of them before and he did not ask for letters of recommendation. He chose them from among many applicants, merely by glancing at their drawings for a few minutes.
In the crowded tension of the days that followed he never spoke to them, except of their work. They felt, entering the office in the morning, that they had no private lives, no significance and no reality save the overwhelming reality of the broad sheets of paper on their tables. The place seemed cold and soulless like a factory, until they looked at him; then they thought that it was not a factory, but a furnace fed on their bodies, his own first.
There were times when he remained in the office all night. They found him still working when they returned in the morning. He did not seem tired. Once he stayed there for two days and two nights in succession. On the afternoon of the third day he fell asleep, half lying across his table. He awakened in a few hours, made no comment and walked from one table to another, to see what had been done. He made corrections, his words sounding as if nothing had interrupted a thought begun some hours ago.
“You’re unbearable when you’re working, Howard,” Austen Heller told him one evening, even though he had not spoken of his work at all.
“Why?” he asked astonished.
“It’s uncomfortable to be in the same room with you. Tension is contagious, you know.”
“What tension? I feel completely natural only when I’m working.”
“That’s it. You’re completely natural only when you’re one inch from bursting into pieces. What in hell are you really made of, Howard? After all, it’s only a building. It’s not the combination of holy sacrament, Indian torture and sexual ecstasy that you seem to make of it.”
“Isn’t it?”
He did not think of Dominique often, but when he did, the thought was not a sudden recollection, it was the acknowledgment of a continuous presence that needed no acknowledgment. He wanted her. He knew where to find her. He waited. It amused him to wait, because he knew that the waiting was unbearable to her. He knew that his absence bound her to him in a manner more complete and humiliating than his presence could enforce. He was giving her time to attempt an escape, in order to let her know her own helplessness when he chose to see her again. She would know that the attempt itself had been of his choice, that it had been only another form of mastery. Then she would be ready either to kill him or to come to him of her own will. The two acts would be equal in her mind. He wanted her brought to this. He waited.
The construction of the Enright House was about to begin, when Roark was summoned to the office of Joel Sutton. Joel Sutton, a successful businessman, was planning the erection of a huge office building. Joel Sutton had based his success on the faculty of understanding nothing about people. He loved everybody. His love admitted no distinctions. It was a great leveler; it could hold no peaks and no hollows, as the surface of a bowl of molasses could not hold them.
Joel Sutton met Roark at a dinner given by Enright. Joel Sutton liked Roark. He admired Roark. He saw no difference between Roark and anyone else. When Roark came to his office, Joel Sutton declared:
“Now I’m not sure, I’m not sure, I’m not sure at all, but I thought that I might consider you for that little building I have in mind. Your Enright House is sort of ... peculiar, but it’s attractive, all buildings are attractive, love buildings, don’t you?—and Rog Enright is a very smart man, an exceedingly smart man, he coins money where nobody else’d think it grew. I’ll take a tip from Rog Enright any time, what’s good enough for Rog Enright is good enough for me.”
Roark waited for weeks after that first interview. Joel Sutton never made up his mind in a hurry.
On an evening in December Austen Heller called on Roark without warning and declared that he must accompany him next Friday to a formal party given by Mrs. Ralston Holcombe.
“Hell, no, Austen,” said Roark.
“Listen, Howard, just exactly why not? Oh, I know, you hate that sort of thing, but that’s not a good reason. On the other hand, I can give you many excellent ones for going. The place is a kind of house of assignation for architects and, of course, you’d sell anything there is to you for a building—oh, I know, for your kind of a building, but still you’d sell the soul you haven’t got, so can’t you stand a few hours of boredom for the sake of future possibilities?”
“Certainly. Only I don’t believe that this sort of thing ever leads to any possibilities.”
“Will you go this time?”
“Why particularly this time?”
“Well, in the first place, that infernal pest Kiki Holcombe demands it. She spent two hours yesterday demanding it and made me miss a luncheon date. It spoils her reputation to have a building like the Enright House going up in town and not be able to display its architect in her salon. It’s a hobby. She collects architects. She insisted that I must bring you and I promised I would.”
“What for?”
“Specifically, she’s going to have Joel Sutton there next Friday. Try, if it kills you, to be nice to him. He’s practically decided to give you that building, from what I hear. A little personal contact might be all that’s needed to set it. He’s got a lot of others after him. They’ll all be there. I want you there. I want you to get that building. I don’t want to hear anything about granite quarries for the next ten years. I don’t like granite quarries.”
Roark sat on a table, his hands clasping the table’s edge to keep himself still. He was exhausted after fourteen hours spent in his office, he thought he should be exhausted, but he could not feel it. He made his shoulders sag in an effort to achieve a relaxation that would not come; his arms were tense, drawn, and one elbow shuddered in a thin, continuous quiver. His long legs were spread apart, one bent and still, with the knee resting on the table, the other hanging down straight from the hip over the table’s edge, swinging impatiently. It was so difficult these days to force himself to rest.
His new home was one large room in a small, modern apartment house on a quiet street. He had chosen the house because it had no cornices over the windows and no paneling on the walls inside. His room contained a few pieces of simple furniture; it looked clean, vast and empty; one expected to hear echoes from its corners.
“Why not go, just once?” said Heller. “It won’t be too awful. It might even amuse you. You’ll see a lot of your old friends there. John Erik Snyte, Peter Keating, Guy Francon and his daughter—you should meet his daughter. Have you ever read her stuff?”
“I’ll go,” said Roark abruptly.
“You’re unpredictable enough even to be sensible at times. I’ll call for you at eight-thirty Friday. Black tie. Do you own a tux, by the way?”
“Enright made me get one.”
“Enright is a very sensible man.”
When Heller left, Roark remained sitting on the table for a long time. He had decided to go to the party, because he knew that it would be the last of all places where Dominique could wish to meet him again.
“There is nothing as useless, my dear Kiki,” said Ellsworth Toohey, “as a rich woman who makes herself a profession of entertaining. But then, all useless things have charm. Like aristocracy, for instance, the most useless conception of all.”
Kiki Holcombe wrinkled her nose in a cute little pout of reproach, but she liked the comparison to aristocracy. Three crystal chandeliers blazed over her Florentine ballroom, and when she looked up at Toohey the lights stood reflected in her eyes, making them a moist collection of sparks between heavy, beaded lashes.
“You say disgusting things, Ellsworth. I don’t know why I keep on inviting you.”
“That is precisely why, my dear. I think I shall be invited here as often as I wish.”
“What can a mere woman do against that?”
“Never start an argument with Mr. Toohey,” said Mrs. Gillespie, a tall woman wearing a necklace of large diamonds, the size of the teeth she bared when she smiled. “It’s no use. We’re beaten in advance.”
“Argument, Mrs. Gillespie,” he said, “is one of the things that has neither use nor charm. Leave it to the men of brains. Brains, of course, are a dangerous confession of weakness. It had been said that men develop brains when they have failed in everything else.”
“Now you don’t mean that at all,” said Mrs. Gillespie, while her smile accepted it as a pleasant truth. She took possession of him triumphantly and led him away as a prize stolen from Mrs. Holcombe who had turned aside for a moment to greet new guests. “But you men of intellect are such children. You’re so sensitive. One must pamper you.”
“I wouldn’t do that, Mrs. Gillespie. We’ll take advantage of it. And to display one’s brains is so vulgar. It’s even more vulgar than to display one’s wealth.”
“Oh dear, you would get that in, wouldn’t you? Now of course I’ve heard that you’re some sort of a radical, but I won’t take it seriously. Not one bit. How do you like that?”
“I like it very much,” said Toohey.
“You can’t kid me. You can’t make me think that you’re one of the dangerous kind. The dangerous kind are all dirty and use bad grammar. And you have such a beautiful voice!”
“Whatever made you think that I aspired to be dangerous, Mrs. Gillespie? I’m merely—well, shall we say? that mildest of all things, a conscience. Your own conscience, conveniently personified in the body of another person and attending to your concern for the less fortunate of this world, thus leaving you free not to attend to it.”
“Well, what a quaint idea! I don’t know whether it’s horrible or very wise indeed.”
“Both, Mrs. Gillespie. As all wisdom.”
Kiki Holcombe surveyed her ballroom with satisfaction. She looked up at the twilight of the ceiling, left untouched above the chandeliers, and she noted how far it was above the guests, how dominant and undisturbed. The huge crowd of guests did not dwarf her hall; it stood over them like a square box of space, grotesquely out of scale; and it was this wasted expanse of air imprisoned above them that gave the occasion an aspect of regal luxury; it was like the lid of a jewel case, unnecessarily large over a flat bottom holding a single small gem.
The guests moved in two broad, changing currents that drew them all, sooner or later, toward two whirlpools; at the center of one stood Ellsworth Toohey, of the other—Peter Keating. Evening clothes were not becoming to Ellsworth Toohey; the rectangle of white shirt front prolonged his face, stretching him out into two dimensions; the wings of his tie made his thin neck look like that of a plucked chicken, pale, bluish and ready to be twisted by a single movement of some strong fist. But he wore his clothes better than any man present. He wore them with the careless impertinence of utter ease in the unbecoming, and the very grotesqueness of his appearance became a declaration of his superiority, superiority great enough to warrant disregard of so much ungainliness.
He was saying to a somber young female who wore glasses and a lowcut evening gown: “My dear, you will never be more than a dilettante of the intellect, unless you submerge yourself in some cause greater than yourself.”
He was saying to an obese gentleman with a face turning purple in the heat of an argument: “But, my friend, I might not like it either. I merely said that such happens to be the inevitable course of history. And who are you or I to oppose the course of history?”
He was saying to an unhappy young architect: “No, my boy, what I have against you is not the bad building you designed, but the bad taste you exhibited in whining about my criticism of it. You should be careful. Someone might say that you can neither dish it out nor take it.”
He was saying to a millionaire’s widow: “Yes, I do think it would be a good idea if you made a contribution to the Workshop of Social Study. It would be a way of taking part in the great human stream of cultural achievement, without upsetting your routine or your digestion.”
Those around him were saying: “Isn’t he witty? And such courage!”
Peter Keating smiled radiantly. He felt the attention and admiration flowing toward him from every part of the ballroom. He looked at the people, all these trim, perfumed, silk-rustling people lacquered with light, dripping with light, as they had all been dripping with shower water a few hours ago, getting ready to come here and stand in homage before a man named Peter Keating. There were moments when he forgot that he was Peter Keating and he glanced at a mirror, at his own figure, he wanted to join in the general admiration for it.
Once the current left him face to face with Ellsworth Toohey. Keating smiled like a boy emerging from a stream on a summer day, glowing, invigorated, restless with energy. Toohey stood looking at him; Toohey’s hands had slipped negligently into his trouser pockets, making his jacket flare out over his thin hips; he seemed to teeter faintly on his small feet; his eyes were attentive in enigmatic appraisal.
“Now this, Ellsworth ... this ... isn’t it a wonderful evening?” said Keating, like a child to a mother who would understand, and a little like a drunk.
“Being happy, Peter? You’re quite the sensation tonight. Little Peter seems to have crossed the line into a big celebrity. It happens like this, one can never tell exactly when or why ... There’s someone here, though, who seems to be ignoring you quite flagrantly, doesn’t she?”
Keating winced. He wondered when and how Toohey had had the time to notice that.
“Oh, well,” said Toohey, “the exception proves the rule. Regrettable, however. I’ve always had the absurd idea that it would take a most unusual man to attract Dominique Francon. So of course I thought of you. Just an idle thought. Still, you know, the man who’ll get her will have something you won’t be able to match. He’ll beat you there.”
“No one’s got her,” snapped Keating.
“No, undoubtedly not. Not yet. That’s rather astonishing. Oh, I suppose it will take an extraordinary kind of man.”
“Look here, what in hell are you doing? You don’t like Dominique Francon. Do you?”
“I never said I did.”
A little later Keating heard Toohey saying solemnly in the midst of some earnest discussion: “Happiness? But that is so middle-class. What is happiness? There are so many things in life so much more important than happiness.”
Keating made his way slowly toward Dominique. She stood leaning back, as if the air were a support solid enough for her thin, naked shoulder blades. Her evening gown was the color of glass. He had the feeling that he should be able to see the wall behind her, through her body. She seemed too fragile to exist; and that very fragility spoke of some frightening strength which held her anchored to existence with a body insufficient for reality.
When he approached, she made no effort to ignore him; she turned to him, she answered; but the monotonous precision of her answers stopped him, made him helpless, made him leave her in a few moments.
When Roark and Heller entered, Kiki Holcombe met them at the door. Heller presented Roark to her, and she spoke as she always did, her voice like a shrill rocket sweeping all opposition aside by sheer speed.
“Oh, Mr. Roark, I’ve been so eager to meet you! We’ve all heard so much about you! Now I must warn you that my husband doesn’t approve of you—oh, purely on artistic grounds, you understand—but don’t let that worry you, you have an ally in this household, an enthusiastic ally!”
“It’s very kind, Mrs. Holcombe,” said Roark. “And perhaps unnecessary.”
“Oh, I adore your Enright House! of course, I can’t say that it represents my own esthetic convictions, but people of culture must keep their minds open to anything, I mean, to include any viewpoint in creative art, we must be broad-minded above all, don’t you think so?”
“I don’t know,” said Roark. “I’ve never been broad-minded.”
She was certain that he intended no insolence; it was not in his voice nor his manner; but insolence had been her first impression of him. He wore evening clothes and they looked well on his tall, thin figure, but somehow it seemed that he did not belong in them; the orange hair looked preposterous with formal dress; besides, she did not like his face; that face suited a work gang or an army, it had no place in her drawing room. She said:
“We’ve all been so interested in your work. Your first building?”
“My fifth.”
“Oh, indeed? Of course. How interesting.”
She clasped her hands, and turned to greet a new arrival. Heller said:
“Whom do you want to meet first? ... There’s Dominique Francon looking at us. Come on.”
Roark turned; he saw Dominique standing alone across the room. There was no expression on her face, not even an effort to avoid expression; it was strange to see a human face presenting a bone structure and an arrangement of muscles, but no meaning, a face as a simple anatomical feature, like a shoulder or an arm, not a mirror of sensate perception any longer. She looked at them as they approached. Her feet stood posed oddly, two small triangles pointed straight and parallel, as if there were no floor around her but the few square inches under her soles and she were safe so long as she did not move or look down. He felt a violent pleasure, because she seemed too fragile to stand the brutality of what he was doing; and because she stood it so well.
“Miss Francon, may I present Howard Roark?” said Heller.
He had not raised his voice to pronounce the name; he wondered why it had sounded so stressed; then he thought that the silence had caught the name and held it still; but there had been no silence: Roark’s face was politely blank and Dominique was saying correctly:
“How do you do, Mr. Roark.”
Roark bowed: “How do you do, Miss Francon.”
She said: “The Enright House ...”
She said it as if she had not wanted to pronounce these three words; and as if they named, not a house, but many things beyond it.
Roark said: “Yes, Miss Francon.”
Then she smiled, the correct, perfunctory smile with which one greets an introduction. She said:
“I know Roger Enright. He is almost a friend of the family.”
“I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting many friends of Mr. Enright.”
“I remember once Father invited him to dinner. It was a miserable dinner. Father is called a brilliant conversationalist, but he couldn’t bring a sound out of Mr. Enright. Roger just sat there. One must know Father to realize what a defeat it was for him.”
“I have worked for your father”—her hand had been moving and it stopped in mid-air—“a few years ago, as a draftsman.”
Her hand dropped. “Then you can see that Father couldn’t possibly get along with Roger Enright.”
“No. He couldn’t.”
“I think Roger almost liked me, though, but he’s never forgiven me for working on a Wynand paper.”
Standing between them, Heller thought that he had been mistaken; there was nothing strange in this meeting; in fact, there simply was nothing. He felt annoyed that Dominique did not speak of architecture, as one would have expected her to do; he concluded regretfully that she disliked this man, as she disliked most people she met.
Then Mrs. Gillespie caught hold of Heller and led him away. Roark and Dominique were left alone. Roark said:
“Mr. Enright reads every paper in town. They are all brought to his office—with the editorial pages cut out.”
“He’s always done that. Roger missed his real vocation. He should have been a scientist. He has such a love for facts and such contempt for commentaries.”
“On the other hand, do you know Mr. Fleming?” he asked.
“No.”
“He’s a friend of Heller’s. Mr. Fleming never reads anything but editorial pages. People like to hear him talk.”
She watched him. He was looking straight at her, very politely, as any man would have looked, meeting her for the first time. She wished she could find some hint in his face, if only a hint of his old derisive smile; even mockery would be an acknowledgment and a tie; she found nothing. He spoke as a stranger. He allowed no reality but that of a man introduced to her in a drawing room, flawlessly obedient to every convention of deference. She faced this respectful formality, thinking that her dress had nothing to hide from him, that he had used her for a need more intimate than the use of the food he ate—while he stood now at a distance of a few feet from her, like a man who could not possibly permit himself to come closer. She thought that this was his form of mockery, after what he had not forgotten and would not acknowledge. She thought that he wanted her to be first to name it, he would bring her to the humiliation of accepting the past—by being first to utter the word recalling it to reality; because he knew that she could not leave it unrecalled.
“And what does Mr. Fleming do for a living?” she asked.
“He’s a manufacturer of pencil sharpeners.”
“Really? A friend of Austen’s?”
“Austen knows many people. He says that’s his business.”
“Is he successful?”
“Who, Miss Francon? I’m not sure about Austen, but Mr. Fleming is very successful. He has branch factories in New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island.”
“You’re wrong about Austen, Mr. Roark. He’s very successful. In his profession and mine you’re successful if it leaves you untouched.”
“How does one achieve that?”
“In one of two ways: by not looking at people at all or by looking at everything about them.”
“Which is preferable, Miss Francon?”
“Whichever is hardest.”
“But a desire to choose the hardest might be a confession of weakness in itself.”
“Of course, Mr. Roark. But it’s the least offensive form of confession.”
“If the weakness is there to be confessed at all.”
Then someone came flying through the crowd, and an arm fell about Roark’s shoulders. It was John Erik Snyte.
“Roark, well of all people to see here!” he cried. “So glad, so glad! Ages, hasn’t it been? Listen, I want to talk to you! Let me have him for a moment, Dominique.”
Roark bowed to her, his arms at his sides, a strand of hair falling forward, so that she did not see his face, but only the orange head bowed courteously for a moment, and he followed Snyte into the crowd.
Snyte was saying: “God, how you’ve come up these last few years! Listen, do you know whether Enright’s planning to go into real estate in a big way, I mean; any other buildings up his sleeve?”
It was Heller who forced Snyte away and brought Roark to Joel Sutton. Joel Sutton was delighted. He felt that Roark’s presence here removed the last of his doubts; it was a stamp of safety on Roark’s person. Joel Sutton’s hand closed about Roark’s elbow, five pink, stubby fingers on the black sleeve. Joel Sutton gulped confidentially:
“Listen, kid, it’s all settled. You’re it. Now don’t squeeze the last pennies out of me, all you architects are cutthroats and highway robbers, but I’ll take a chance on you, you’re a smart boy, snared old Rog, didn’t you? So here you’ve got me swindled too, just about almost, that is, I’ll give you a ring in a few days and we’ll have a dogfight over the contract!”
Heller looked at them and thought that it was almost indecent to see them together: Roark’s tall, ascetic figure, with that proud cleanliness peculiar to long-lined bodies, and beside him the smiling ball of meat whose decision could mean so much.
Then Roark began to speak about the future building, but Joel Sutton looked up at him, astonished and hurt. Joel Sutton had not come here to talk about buildings; parties were given for the purpose of enjoying oneself, and what greater joy could there be but to forget the important things of one’s life? So Joel Sutton talked about badminton; that was his hobby; it was a patrician hobby, he explained, he was not being common like other men who wasted time on golf. Roark listened politely. He had nothing to say.
“You do play badminton, don’t you?” Joel Sutton asked suddenly.
“No,” said Roark.
“You don’t?” gulped Joel Sutton. “You don’t? Well, what a pity, oh what a rotten pity! I thought sure you did, with that lanky frame of yours you’d be good, you’d be a wow, I thought sure we’d beat the pants off of old Tompkins anytime while that building’s being put up.”
“While that building’s being put up, Mr. Sutton, I wouldn’t have the time to play anyway.”
“What d’you mean, wouldn’t have the time? What’ve you got draftsmen for? Hire a couple extra, let them worry, I’ll be paying you enough, won’t I? But then, you don’t play, what a rotten shame, I thought sure ... The architect who did my building down on Canal Street was a whiz at badminton, but he died last year, got himself cracked up in an auto accident, damn him, was a fine architect, too. And here you don’t play.”
“Mr. Sutton, you’re not really upset about it, are you?”
“I’m very seriously disappointed, my boy.”
“But what are you actually hiring me for?”
“What am I what?”
“Hiring me for?”
“Why, to do a building of course.”
“Do you really think it would be a better building if I played badminton?”
“Well, there’s business and there’s fun, there’s the practical and there’s the human end of it, oh, I don’t mind, still I thought with a skinny frame like yours you’d surely ... but all right, all right, we can’t have everything....”
When Joel Sutton left him, Roark heard a bright voice saying: “Congratulations, Howard,” and turned to find Peter Keating smiling at him radiantly and derisively.
“Hello, Peter. What did you say?”
“I said, congratulations on landing Joel Sutton. Only, you know, you didn’t handle that very well.”
“What?”
“Old Joel. Oh, of course, I heard most of it—why shouldn’t I?—it was very entertaining. That’s no way to go about it, Howard. You know what I would have done? I’d have sworn I’d played badminton since I was two years old and how it’s the game of kings and earls and it takes a soul of rare distinction to appreciate it and by the time he’d put me to the test I’d have made it my business to play like an earl, too. What would it cost you?”
“I didn’t think of it.”
“It’s a secret, Howard. A rare one. I’ll give it to you free of charge with my compliments: always be what people want you to be. Then you’ve got them where you want them. I’m giving it free because you’ll never make use of it. You’ll never know how. You’re brilliant in some respects, Howard, I’ve always said that—and terribly stupid in others.”
“Possibly.”
“You ought to try and learn a few things, if you’re going in for playing the game through the Kiki Holcombe salon. Are you? Growing up, Howard? Though it did give me a shock to see you here of all places. Oh, and yes, congratulations on the Enright job, beautiful job as usual -where have you been all summer?—remind me to give you a lesson on how to wear a tux, God, but it looks silly on you! That’s what I like, I like to see you looking silly, we’re old friends, aren’t we, Howard?”
“You’re drunk, Peter.”
“Of course I am. But I haven’t touched a drop tonight, not a drop. What I’m drunk on—you’ll never learn, never, it’s not for you, and that’s also part of what I’m drunk on, that it’s not for you. You know, Howard, I love you. I really do. I do—tonight.”
“Yes, Peter. You always will, you know.”
Roark was introduced to many people and many people spoke to him. They smiled and seemed sincere in their efforts to approach him as a friend, to express appreciation, to display good will and cordial interest. But what he heard was: “The Enright House is magnificent. It’s almost as good as the Cosmo-Slotnick Building.” “I’m sure you have a great future, Mr. Roark, believe me, I know the signs, you’ll be another Ralston Holcombe.” He was accustomed to hostility; this kind of benevolence was more offensive than hostility. He shrugged; he thought that he would be out of here soon and back in the simple, clean reality of his own office.
He did not look at Dominique again for the rest of the evening. She watched him in the crowd. She watched those who stopped him and spoke to him. She watched his shoulders stooped courteously as he listened. She thought that this, too, was his manner of laughing at her; he let her see him being delivered to the crowd before her eyes, being surrendered to any person who wished to own him for a few moments. He knew that this was harder for her to watch than the sun and the drill in the quarry. She stood obediently, watching. She did not expect him to notice her again; she had to remain there as long as he was in this room.
There was another person, that night, abnormally aware of Roark’s presence, aware from the moment Roark had entered the room. Ellsworth Toohey had seen him enter. Toohey had never set eyes on him before and did not know him. But Toohey stood looking at him for a long time.
Then Toohey moved through the crowd, and smiled at his friends. But between smiles and sentences, his eyes went back to the man with the orange hair. He looked at the man as he looked occasionally at the pavement from a window on the thirtieth floor, wondering about his own body were it to be hurled down and what would happen when it struck against that pavement. He did not know the man’s name, his profession or his past; he had no need to know; it was not a man to him, but only a force; Toohey never saw men. Perhaps it was the fascination of seeing that particular force so explicitly personified in a human body.
After a while he asked John Erik Snyte, pointing:
“Who is that man?”
“That?” said Snyte. “Howard Roark. You know, the Enright House.”
“Oh,” said Toohey.
“What?”
“Of course. It would be.”
“Want to meet him?”
“No,” said Toohey. “No, I don’t want to meet him.”
For the rest of the evening, whenever some figure obstructed Toohey’s view of the hall, his head would jerk impatiently to find Roark again. He did not want to look at Roark; he had to look; just as he always had to look down at that distant pavement, dreading the sight.
That evening, Ellsworth Toohey was conscious of no one but Roark. Roark did not know that Toohey existed in the room.
When Roark left, Dominique stood counting the minutes, to be certain that he would be lost to sight in the streets before she could trust herself to go out. Then she moved to leave.
Kiki Holcombe’s thin, moist fingers clasped her hand in parting, clasped it vaguely and slipped up to hold her wrist for a moment.
“And, my dear,” asked Kiki Holcombe, “what did you think of that new one, you know, I saw you talking to him, that Howard Roark?”
“I think,” said Dominique firmly, “that he is the most revolting person I’ve ever met.”
“Oh, now, really?”
“Do you care for that sort of unbridled arrogance? I don’t know what one could say for him, unless it’s that he’s terribly good-looking, if that matters.”
“Good-looking? Are you being funny, Dominique?”
Kiki Holcombe saw Dominique being stupidly puzzled for once. And Dominique realized that what she saw in his face, what made it the face of a god to her, was not seen by others; that it could leave them indifferent; that what she had thought to be the most obvious, inconsequential remark was, instead, a confession of something within her, some quality not shared by others.
“Why, my dear,” said Kiki, “he’s not good-looking at all, but extremely masculine.”
“Don’t let it astonish you, Dominique,” said a voice behind her. “Kiki’s esthetic judgment is not yours—nor mine.”
Dominique turned. Ellsworth Toohey stood there, smiling, watching her face attentively.
“You ...” she began and stopped.
“Of course,” said Toohey, bowing faintly in understanding affirmative of what she had not said. “Do give me credit for discernment, Dominique, somewhat equal to yours. Though not for esthetic enjoyment. I’ll leave that part of it to you. But we do see things, at times, which are not obvious, don’t we—you and I?”
“What things?”
“My dear, what a long philosophical discussion that would take, and how involved, and how—unnecessary. I’ve always told you that we should be good friends. We have so much in common intellectually. We start from opposite poles, but that makes no difference, because you see, we meet in the same point. It was a very interesting evening, Dominique.”
“What are you driving at?”
“For instance, it was interesting to discover what sort of thing appears good-looking to you. It’s nice to have you classified firmly, concretely. Without words—just with the aid of a certain face.”
“If ... if you can see what you’re talking about, you can’t be what you are.”
“No, my dear. I must be what I am, precisely because of what I see.”
“You know, Ellsworth, I think you’re much worse than I thought you were.”
“And perhaps much worse than you’re thinking now. But useful. We’re all useful to one another. As you will be to me. As, I think, you will want to be.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s bad, Dominique. Very bad. So pointless. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I couldn’t possibly explain it. If you do—I have you, already, without saying anything further.”
“What kind of a conversation is this?” asked Kiki, bewildered.
“Just our way of kidding each other,” said Toohey brightly. “Don’t let it bother you, Kiki. Dominique and I are always kidding each other. Not very well, though, because you see—we can’t.”
“Some day, Ellsworth,” said Dominique, “you’ll make a mistake.”
“Quite possible. And you, my dear, have made yours already.”
“Good night, Ellsworth.”
“Good night, Dominique.”
Kiki turned to him when Dominique had gone.
“What’s the matter with both of you, Ellsworth? Why such talk—over nothing at all? People’s faces and first impressions don’t mean a thing.”
“That, my dear Kiki,” he answered, his voice soft and distant, as if he were giving an answer, not to her, but to a thought of his own, “is one of our greatest common fallacies. There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge. Have you ever thought about the style of a soul, Kiki?”
“The ... what?”
“The style of a soul. Do you remember the famous philosopher who spoke of the style of a civilization? He called it ‘style.’ He said it was the nearest word he could find for it. He said that every civilization has its one basic principle, one single, supreme, determining conception, and every endeavor of men within that civilization is true, unconsciously and irrevocably, to that one principle.... I think, Kiki, that every human soul has a style of its own, also. Its one basic theme. You’ll see it reflected in every thought, every act, every wish of that person. The one absolute, the one imperative in that living creature. Years of studying a man won’t show it to you. His face will. You’d have to write volumes to describe a person. Think of his face. You need nothing else.”
“That sounds fantastic, Ellsworth. And unfair, if true. It would leave people naked before you.”
“It’s worse than that. It also leaves you naked before them. You betray yourself by the manner in which you react to a certain face. To a certain kind of face.... The style of your soul ... There’s nothing important on earth, except human beings. There’s nothing as important about human beings as their relations to one another....”
“Well, what do you see in my face?”
He looked at her, as if he had just noticed her presence.
“What did you say?”
“I said, what do you see in my face?”
“Oh ... yes ... well, tell me the movie stars you like and I’ll tell you what you are.”
“You know, I just love to be analyzed. Now let’s see. My greatest favorite has always been ...”
But he was not listening. He had turned his back on her, he was walking away without apology. He looked tired. She had never seen him being rude before—except by intention.
A little later, from among a group of friends, she heard his rich, vibrant voice saying:
“... and, therefore, the noblest conception on earth is that of men’s absolute equality.”