IX
JOHN ERIK SNYTE LOOKED THROUGH ROARK’S SKETCHES, FLIPPED three of them aside, gathered the rest into an even pile, glanced again at the three, tossed them down one after another on top of the pile, with three sharp thuds, and said:
“Remarkable. Radical, but remarkable. What are you doing tonight?”
“Why?” asked Roark, stupefied.
“Are you free? Mind starting in at once? Take your coat off, go to the drafting room, borrow tools from somebody and do me up a sketch for a department store we’re remodeling. Just a quick sketch, just a general idea, but I must have it tomorrow. Mind staying late tonight? The heat’s on and I’ll have Joe send you up some dinner. Want black coffee or Scotch or what? Just tell Joe. Can you stay?”
“Yes,” said Roark, incredulously. “I can work all night.”
“Fine! Splendid! That’s just what I’ve always needed—a Cameron man. I’ve got every other kind. Oh, yes, what did they pay you at Francon’s?”
“Sixty-five.”
“Well, I can’t splurge like Guy the Epicure. Fifty’s tops. Okay? Fine. Go right in. I’ll have Billings explain about the store to you. I want something modern. Understand? Modern, violent, crazy, to knock their eye out. Don’t restrain yourself. Go the limit. Pull any stunt you can think of, the goofier the better. Come on!”
John Erik Snyte shot to his feet, flung a door open into a huge drafting room, flew in, skidded against a table, stopped, and said to a stout man with a grim moon-face: “Billings—Roark. He’s our modernist. Give him the Benton store. Get him some instruments. Leave him your keys and show him what to lock up tonight. Start him as of this morning. Fifty. What time was my appointment with Dolson Brothers? I’m late already. So long, I won’t be back tonight.”
He skidded out, slamming the door. Billings evinced no surprise. He looked at Roark as if Roark had always been there. He spoke impassively, in a weary drawl. Within twenty minutes, he left Roark at a drafting table with paper, pencils, instruments, a set of plans and photographs of the department store, a set of charts and a long list of instructions.
Roark looked at the clean white sheet before him, his fist closed tightly about the thin stem of a pencil. He put the pencil down, and picked it up again, his thumb running softly up and down the smooth shaft; he saw that the pencil was trembling. He put it down quickly, and he felt anger at himself for the weakness of allowing this job to mean so much to him, for the sudden knowledge of what the months of idleness behind him had really meant. His finger tips were pressed to the paper, as if the paper held them, as a surface charged with electricity will hold the flesh of a man who has brushed against it, hold and hurt. He tore his fingers off the paper. Then he went to work....
John Erik Snyte was fifty years old; he wore an expression of quizzical amusement, shrewd and unwholesome, as if he shared with each man he contemplated a lewd secret which he would not mention because it was so obvious to them both. He was a prominent architect; his expression did not change when he spoke of this fact. He considered Guy Francon an impractical idealist; he was not restrained by any Classic dogma; he was much more skillful and liberal; he built anything. He had no distaste for modern architecture and built cheerfully, when a rare client asked for it, bare boxes with flat roofs, which he called progressive; he built Roman mansions which he called fastidious; he built Gothic churches which he called spiritual. He saw no difference among any of them. He never became angry, except when somebody called him eclectic.
He had a system of his own. He employed five designers of various types and he staged a contest among them on each commission he received. He chose the winning design and improved it with bits of the four others. “Six minds,” he said, “are better than one.”
When Roark saw the final drawing of the Benton Department Store, he understood why Snyte had not been afraid to hire him. He recognized his own planes of space, his windows, his system of circulation; he saw, added to it, Corinthian capitals, Gothic vaulting, Colonial chandeliers and incredible moldings, vaguely Moorish. The drawing was done in water color, with miraculous delicacy, mounted on cardboard, covered with a veil of tissue paper. The men in the drafting room were not allowed to look at it, except from a safe distance; all hands had to be washed, all cigarettes discarded. John Erik Snyte attached a great importance to the proper appearance of a drawing for submission to clients, and kept a young Chinese student of architecture employed solely upon the execution of these masterpieces.
Roark knew what to expect of his job. He would never see his work erected, only pieces of it, which he preferred not to see; but he would be free to design as he wished and he would have the experience of solving actual problems. It was less than he wanted and more than he could expect. He accepted it at that. He met his fellow designers, the four other contestants, and learned that they were unofficially nicknamed in the drafting room as “Classic,” “Gothic,” “Renaissance” and “Miscellaneous.” He winced a little when he was addressed as “Hey, Modernistic.”
The strike of the building-trades unions infuriated Guy Francon. The strike had started against the contractors who were erecting the Noyes-Belmont Hotel, and had spread to all the new structures of the city. It had been mentioned in the press that the architects of the Noyes-Belmont were the firm of Francon & Heyer.
Most of the press helped the fight along, urging the contractors not to surrender. The loudest attacks against the strikers came from the powerful papers of the great Wynand chain.
“We have always stood,” said the Wynand editorials, “for the rights of the common man against the yellow sharks of privilege, but we cannot give our support to the destruction of law and order.” It had never been discovered whether the Wynand papers led the public or the public led the Wynand papers; it was known only that the two kept remarkably in step. It was not known to anyone, however, save to Guy Francon and a very few others, that Gail Wynand owned the corporation which owned the corporation which owned the Noyes-Belmont Hotel.
This added greatly to Francon’s discomfort. Gail Wynand’s real-estate operations were rumored to be vaster than his journalistic empire. It was the first chance Francon had ever had at a Wynand commission and he grasped it avidly, thinking of the possibilities which it could open. He and Keating had put their best efforts into designing the most ornate of all Rococo palaces for future patrons who could pay twenty-five dollars per day per room and who were fond of plaster flowers, marble cupids and open elevator cages of bronze lace. The strike had shattered the future possibilities; Francon could not be blamed for it, but one could never tell whom Gail Wynand would blame and for what reason. The unpredictable, unaccountable shifts of Wynand’s favor were famous, and it was well known that few architects he employed once were ever employed by him again.
Francon’s sullen mood led him to the unprecedented breach of snapping over nothing in particular at the one person who had always been immune from it—Peter Keating. Keating shrugged, and turned his back to him in silent insolence. Then Keating wandered aimlessly through the halls, snarling at young draftsmen without provocation. He bumped into Lucius N. Heyer in a doorway and snapped: “Look where you’re going!” Heyer stared after him, bewildered, blinking.
There was little to do in the office, nothing to say and everyone to avoid. Keating left early and walked home through a cold December twilight.
At home, he cursed aloud the thick smell of paint from the overheated radiators. He cursed the chill, when his mother opened a window. He could find no reason for his restlessness, unless it was the sudden inactivity that left him alone. He could not bear to be left alone.
He snatched up the telephone receiver and called Catherine Halsey. The sound of her clear voice was like a hand pressed soothingly against his hot forehead. He said: “Oh, nothing important, dear, I just wondered if you’d be home tonight. I thought I’d drop in after dinner.” “Of course, Peter. I’ll be home.” “Swell. About eight-thirty?” “Yes ... Oh, Peter, have you heard about Uncle Ellsworth?” “Yes, God damn it, I’ve heard about your Uncle Ellsworth! ... I’m sorry, Katie... Forgive me, darling, I didn’t mean to be rude, but I’ve been hearing about your uncle all day long. I know, it’s wonderful and all that, only look, we’re not going to talk about him again tonight!” “No, of course not. I’m sorry. I understand. I’ll be waiting for you.” “So long, Katie.”
He had heard the latest story about Ellsworth Toohey, but he did not want to think of it because it brought him back to the annoying subject of the strike. Six months ago, on the wave of his success with Sermons in Stone, Ellsworth Toohey had been signed to write “One Small Voice,” a daily syndicated column for the Wynand papers. It appeared in the Banner and had started as a department of art criticism, but grown into an informal tribune from which Ellsworth M. Toohey pronounced verdicts on art, literature, New York restaurants, international crises and sociology—mainly sociology. It had been a great success. But the building strike had placed Ellsworth M. Toohey in a difficult position. He made no secret of his sympathy with the strikers, but he had said nothing in his column, for no one could say what he pleased on the papers owned by Gail Wynand save Gail Wynand. However, a mass meeting of strike sympathizers had been called for this evening. Many famous men were to speak, Ellsworth Toohey among them. At least, Toohey’s name had been announced.
The event caused a great deal of curious speculation and bets were made on whether Toohey would dare to appear. “He will,” Keating had heard a draftsman insist vehemently, “he’ll sacrifice himself. He’s that kind. He’s the only honest man in print.” “He won’t,” another had said. “Do you realize what it means to pull a stunt like that on Wynand? Once Wynand gets it in for a man, he’ll break the guy sure as hell’s fire. Nobody knows when he’ll do it or how he’ll do it, but he’ll do it, and nobody’ ll prove a thing on him, and you’re done for once you get Wynand after you.” Keating did not care about the issue one way or another, and the whole matter annoyed him.
He ate his dinner, that evening, in grim silence and when Mrs. Keating began, with an “Oh, by the way ...” to lead the conversation in a direction he recognized, he snapped: “You’re not going to talk about Catherine. Keep still.” Mrs. Keating said nothing further and concentrated on forcing more food on his plate.
He took a taxi to Greenwich Village. He hurried up the stairs. He jerked at the bell. He waited. There was no answer. He stood, leaning against the wall, ringing, for a long time. Catherine wouldn’t be out when she knew he was coming; she couldn’t be. He walked incredulously down the stairs, out to the street, and looked up at the windows of her apartment. The windows were dark.
He stood, looking up at the windows as at a tremendous betrayal. Then came a sick feeling of loneliness, as if he were homeless in a great city; for the moment, he forgot his own address or its existence. Then he thought of the meeting, the great mass meeting where her uncle was publicly to make a martyr of himself tonight. That’s where she went, he thought, the damn little fool! He said aloud: “To hell with her!”... And he was walking rapidly in the direction of the meeting hall.
There was one naked bulb of light over the square frame of the hall’s entrance, a small, blue-white lump glowing ominously, too cold and too bright. It leaped out of the dark street, lighting one thin trickle of rain from some ledge above, a glistening needle of glass, so thin and smooth that Keating thought crazily of stories where men had been killed by being pierced with an icicle. A few curious loafers stood indifferently in the rain around the entrance, and a few policemen. The door was open. The dim lobby was crowded with people who could not get into the packed hall; they were listening to a loud-speaker installed there for the occasion. At the door three vague shadows were handing out pamphlets to passers-by. One of the shadows was a consumptive, unshaved young man with a long, bare neck; the other was a trim youth with a fur collar on an expensive coat; the third was Catherine Halsey.
She stood in the rain, slumped, her stomach jutting forward in weariness, her nose shiny, her eyes bright with excitement. Keating stopped, staring at her.
Her hand shot toward him mechanically with a pamphlet, then she raised her eyes and saw him. She smiled without astonishment, and said happily:
“Why, Peter! How sweet of you to come here!”
“Katie ...” he choked a little. “Katie, what the hell ...”
“But I had to, Peter.” Her voice had no trace of apology. “You don’t understand, but I ...”
“Get out of the rain. Get inside.”
“But I can’t! I have to ...”
“Get out of the rain at least, you fool!” He pushed her roughly through the door, into a corner of the lobby.
“Peter darling, you’re not angry, are you? You see, it was like this: I didn’t think Uncle would let me come here tonight, but at the last minute he said I could if I wanted to, and that I could help with the pamphlets. I knew you’d understand, and I left you a note on the living room table, explaining, and ...”
“You left me a note? Inside?”
“Yes ... Oh ... Oh, dear me, I never thought of that, you couldn’t get in of course, how silly of me, but I was in such a rush! No, you’re not going to be angry, you can’t! Don’t you see what this means to him? Don’t you know what he’s sacrificing by coming here? And I knew he would. I told them so, those people who said not a chance, it’ll be the end of him—and it might be, but he doesn’t care. That’s what he’s like. I’m frightened and I’m terribly happy, because what he’s done—it makes me believe in all human beings. But I’m frightened, because you see, Wynand will ...”
“Keep still! I know it all. I’m sick of it. I don’t want to hear about your uncle or Wynand or the damn strike. Let’s get out of here.”
“Oh, no, Peter! We can’t! I want to hear him and ...”
“Shut up over there!” someone hissed at them from the crowd.
“We’re missing it all,” she whispered. “That’s Austen Heller speaking. Don’t you want to hear Austen Heller?”
Keating looked up at the loud-speaker with a certain respect, which he felt for all famous names. He had not read much of Austen Heller, but he knew that Heller was the star columnist of the Chronicle, a brilliant, independent newspaper, arch-enemy of the Wynand publications; that Heller came from an old, distinguished family and had graduated from Oxford; that he had started as a literary critic and ended by becoming a quiet fiend devoted to the destruction of all forms of compulsion, private or public, in heaven or on earth; that he had been cursed by preachers, bankers, clubwomen and labor organizers; that he had better manners than the social elite whom he usually mocked, and a tougher constitution than the laborers whom he usually defended; that he could discuss the latest play on Broadway, medieval poetry or international finance; that he never donated to charity, but spent more of his own money than he could afford, on defending political prisoners anywhere.
The voice coming from the loud-speaker was dry, precise, with the faint trace of a British accent.
“... and we must consider,” Austen Heller was saying unemotionally, “that since—unfortunately—we are forced to live together, the most important thing for us to remember is that the only way in which we can have any law at all is to have as little of it as possible. I see no ethical standard by which to measure the whole unethical conception of a State, except in the amount of time, of thought, of money, of effort and of obedience, which a society extorts from its every member. Its value and its civilization are in inverse ratio to that extortion. There is no conceivable law by which a man can be forced to work on any terms except those he chooses to set. There is no conceivable law to prevent him from setting them—just as there is none to force his employer to accept them. The freedom to agree or disagree is the foundation of our kind of society—and the freedom to strike is a part of it. I am mentioning this as a reminder to a certain Petronius from Hell’s Kitchen, an exquisite bastard who has been rather noisy lately about telling us that this strike represents a destruction of law and order.”
The loud-speaker coughed out a high, shrill sound of approval and a clatter of applause. There were gasps among the people in the lobby. Catherine grasped Keating’s arm. “Oh, Peter!” she whispered. “He means Wynand! Wynand was born in Hell’s Kitchen. He can afford to say that, but Wynand will take it out on Uncle Ellsworth!”
Keating could not listen to the rest of Heller’s speech, because his head was swimming in so violent an ache that the sound hurt his eyes and he had to keep his eyelids shut tightly. He leaned against the wall.
He opened his eyes with a jerk, when he became aware of the peculiar silence around him. He had not noticed the end of Heller’s speech. He saw the people in the lobby standing in tense, solemn expectation, and the blank rasping of the loud-speaker pulled every glance into its dark funnel. Then a voice came through the silence, loudly and slowly:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have the great honor of presenting to you now Mr. Ellsworth Monkton Toohey!”
Well, thought Keating, Bennett’s won his six bits down at the office. There were a few seconds of silence. Then the thing which happened hit Keating on the back of the head; it was not a sound nor a blow, it was something that ripped time apart, that cut the moment from the normal one preceding it. He knew only the shock, at first; a distinct, conscious second was gone before he realized what it was and that it was applause. It was such a crash of applause that he waited for the loud-speaker to explode; it went on and on and on, pressing against the walls of the lobby, and he thought he could feel the walls buckling out to the street. The people around him were cheering. Catherine stood, her lips parted, and he felt certain that she was not breathing at all.
It was a long time before silence came suddenly, as abrupt and shocking as the roar; the loud-speaker died, choking on a high note. Those in the lobby stood still. Then came the voice.
“My friends,” it said, simply and solemnly. “My brothers,” it added softly, involuntarily, both full of emotion and smiling apologetically at the emotion. “I am more touched by this reception than I should allow myself to be. I hope I shall be forgiven for a trace of the vain child which is in all of us. But I realize—and in that spirit I accept it—that this tribute was paid not to my person, but to a principle which chance has granted me to represent in all humility tonight.”
It was not a voice, it was a miracle. It unrolled as a velvet banner. It spoke English words, but the resonant clarity of each syllable made it sound like a new language spoken for the first time. It was the voice of a giant.
Keating stood, his mouth open. He did not hear what the voice was saying. He heard the beauty of the sounds without meaning. He felt no need to know the meaning; he could accept anything, he would be led blindly anywhere.
“... and so, my friends,” the voice was saying, “the lesson to be learned from our tragic struggle is the lesson of unity. We shall unite or we shall be defeated. Our will—the will of the disinherited, the forgotten, the oppressed—shall weld us into a solid bulwark, with a common faith and a common goal. This is the time for every man to renounce the thoughts of his petty little problems, of gain, of comfort, of self-gratification. This is the time to merge his self in a great current, in the rising tide which is approaching to sweep us all, willing or unwilling, into the future. History, my friends, does not ask questions or acquiescence. It is irrevocable, as the voice of the masses that determine it. Let us listen to the call. Let us organize, my brothers. Let us organize. Let us organize. Let us organize.”
Keating looked at Catherine. There was no Catherine; there was only a white face dissolving in the sounds of the loud-speaker. It was not that she heard her uncle; Keating could feel no jealousy of him; he wished he could. It was not affection. It was something cold and impersonal that left her empty, her will surrendered and no human will holding hers, but a nameless thing in which she was being swallowed.
“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered. His voice was savage. He was afraid.
She turned to him, as if she were emerging from unconsciousness. He knew that she was trying to recognize him and everything he implied. She whispered:
“Yes. Let’s get out.”
They walked through the streets, through the rain, without direction. It was cold, but they went on, to move, to feel the movement, to know the sensation of their own muscles moving.
“We’re getting drenched,” Keating said at last, as bluntly and naturally as he could; their silence frightened him; it proved that they both knew the same thing and that the thing had been real. “Let’s find some place where we can have a drink.”
“Yes,” said Catherine, “let’s. It’s so cold.... Isn’t it stupid of me? Now I’ve missed Uncle’s speech and I wanted so much to hear it.” It was all right. She had mentioned it. She had mentioned it quite naturally, with a healthy amount of proper regret. The thing was gone. “But I wanted to be with you, Peter ... I want to be with you always.” The thing gave a last jerk, not in the meaning of what she said, but in the reason that had prompted her to say it. Then it was gone, and Keating smiled; his fingers sought her bare wrist between her sleeve and glove, and her skin was warm against his....
Many days later Keating heard the story that was being told all over town. It was said that on the day after the mass meeting Gail Wynand had given Ellsworth Toohey a raise in salary. Toohey had been furious and had tried to refuse it. “You cannot bribe me, Mr. Wynand,” he had said. “I’m not bribing you,” Wynand had answered; “don’t flatter yourself.”
When the strike was settled, interrupted construction went forward with a spurt throughout the city, and Keating found himself spending days and nights at work, with new commissions pouring into the office. Francon smiled happily at everybody and gave a small party for his staff, to erase the memory of anything he might have said. The palatial residence of Mr. and Mrs. Dale Ainsworth on Riverside Drive, a pet project of Keating’s, done in Late Renaissance and gray granite, was completed at last. Mr. and Mrs. Dale Ainsworth gave a formal reception as a housewarming, to which Guy Francon and Peter Keating were invited, but Lucius N. Heyer was ignored, quite accidentally, as always happened to him of late. Francon enjoyed the reception, because every square foot of granite in the house reminded him of the stupendous payment received by a certain granite quarry in Connecticut. Keating enjoyed the reception, because the stately Mrs. Ainsworth said to him with a disarming smile: “But I was certain that you were Mr. Francon’s partner! It’s Francon and Heyer, of course! How perfectly careless of me! All I can offer by way of excuse is that if you aren’t his partner, one would certainly say you were entitled to be!” Life in the office rolled on smoothly, in one of those periods when everything seemed to go well.
Keating was astonished, therefore, one morning shortly after the Ainsworth reception, to see Francon arrive at the office with a countenance of nervous irritation. “Oh, nothing,” he waved his hand at Keating impatiently, “nothing at all.” In the drafting room Keating noticed three draftsmen, their heads close together, bent over a section of the New York Banner, reading with a guilty kind of avid interest; he heard an unpleasant chuckle from one of them. When they saw him the paper disappeared, too quickly. He had no time to inquire into this; a contractor’s job runner was waiting for him in his office, also a stack of mail and drawings to be approved.
He had forgotten the incident three hours later in a rush of appointments. He felt light, clear-headed, exhilarated by his own energy. When he had to consult his library on a new drawing which he wished to compare with its best prototypes, he walked out of his office, whistling, swinging the drawing gaily.
His motion had propelled him halfway across the reception room, when he stopped short; the drawing swung forward and flapped back against his knees. He forgot that it was quite improper for him to pause there like that in the circumstances.
A young woman stood before the railing, speaking to the reception clerk. Her slender body seemed out of all scale in relation to a normal human body; its lines were so long, so fragile, so exaggerated that she looked like a stylized drawing of a woman and made the correct proportions of a normal being appear heavy and awkward beside her. She wore a plain gray suit; the contrast between its tailored severity and her appearance was deliberately exorbitant—and strangely elegant. She let the finger tips of one hand rest on the railing, a narrow hand ending the straight imperious line of her arm. She had gray eyes that were not ovals, but two long, rectangular cuts edged by parallel lines of lashes; she had an air of cold serenity and an exquisitely vicious mouth. Her face, her pale gold hair, her suit seemed to have no color, but only a hint, just on the verge of the reality of color, making the full reality seem vulgar. Keating stood still, because he understood for the first time what it was that artists spoke about when they spoke of beauty.
“I’ll see him now, if I see him at all,” she was saying to the reception clerk. “He asked me to come and this is the only time I have.” It was not a command; she spoke as if it were not necessary for her voice to assume the tones of commanding.
“Yes, but ...” A light buzzed on the clerk’s switchboard; she plugged the connection through, hastily. “Yes, Mr. Francon ...” She listened and nodded with relief. “Yes, Mr. Francon.” She turned to the visitor: “Will you go right in, please?”
The young woman turned and looked at Keating as she passed him on her way to the stairs. Her eyes went past him without stopping. Something ebbed from his stunned admiration. He had had time to see her eyes; they seemed weary and a little contemptuous, but they left him with a sense of cold cruelty.
He heard her walking up the stairs, and the feeling vanished, but the admiration remained. He approached the reception clerk eagerly.
“Who was that?” he asked.
The clerk shrugged:
“That’s the boss’s little girl.”
“Why, the lucky stiff!” said Keating. “He’s been holding out on me.”
“You misunderstood me,” the clerk said coldly. “It’s his daughter. It’s Dominique Francon.”
“Oh,” said Keating. “Oh, Lord!”
“Yeah?” the girl looked at him sarcastically. “Have you read this morning’s Banner?”
“No. Why?”
“Read it.”
Her switchboard buzzed and she turned away from him.
He sent a boy for a copy of the Banner and turned anxiously to the column, “Your House,” by Dominique Francon. He had heard that she’d been quite successful lately with descriptions of the homes of prominent New Yorkers. Her field was confined to home decoration, but she ventured occasionally into architectural criticism. Today her subject was the new residence of Mr. and Mrs. Dale Ainsworth on Riverside Drive. He read, among many other things, the following:
“You enter a magnificent lobby of golden marble and you think that this is the City Hall or the Main Post Office, but it isn’t. It has, however, everything: the mezzanine with the colonnade and the stairway with a goitre and the cartouches in the form of looped leather belts. Only it’s not leather, it’s marble. The dining room has a splendid bronze gate, placed by mistake on the ceiling, in the shape of a trellis entwined with fresh bronze grapes. There are dead ducks and rabbits hanging on the wall panels, in bouquets of carrots, petunias and string beans. I do not think these would have been very attractive if real, but since they are bad plaster imitations, it is all right.... The bedroom windows face a brick wall, not a very neat wall, but nobody needs to see the bedrooms. ... The front windows are large enough and admit plenty of light, as well as the feet of the marble cupids that roost on the outside. The cupids are well fed and present a pretty picture to the street, against the severe granite of the façade; they are quite commendable, unless you just can’t stand to look at dimpled soles every time you glance out to see whether it’s raining. If you get tired of it, you can always look out of the central windows of the third floor, and into the cast-iron rump of Mercury who sits on top of the pediment over the entrance. It’s a very beautiful entrance. Tomorrow, we shall visit the home of Mr. and Mrs. Smythe-Pickering.”
Keating had designed the house. But he could not help chuckling through his fury when he thought of what Francon must have felt reading this, and of how Francon was going to face Mrs. Dale Ainsworth. Then he forgot the house and the article. He remembered only the girl who had written it.
He picked three sketches at random from his table and started for Francon’s office to ask his approval of the sketches, which he did not need.
On the stair landing outside Francon’s closed door he stopped. He heard Francon’s voice behind the door, loud, angry and helpless, the voice he always heard when Francon was beaten.
“... to expect such an outrage! From my own daughter! I’m used to anything from you, but this beats it all. What am I going to do? How am I going to explain? Do you have any kind of a vague idea of my position?”
Then Keating heard her laughing; it was a sound so gay and so cold that he knew it was best not to go in. He knew he did not want to go in, because he was afraid again, as he had been when he’d seen her eyes.
He turned and descended the stairs. When he had reached the floor below, he was thinking that he would meet her, that he would meet her soon and that Francon would not be able to prevent it now. He thought of it eagerly, laughing in relief at the picture of Francon’s daughter as he had imagined her for years, revising his vision of his future; even though he felt dimly that it would be better if he never met her again.