It was late when the last guest departed and they were left alone among the filled ash trays and empty glasses. They sat at opposite ends of the living room, and Keating tried to postpone the moment of thinking what he had to think now.
“All right, Peter,” said Dominique, rising, “let’s get it over with.”
When he lay in the darkness beside her, his desire satisfied and left hungrier than ever by the unmoving body that had not responded, not even in revulsion, when he felt defeated in the one act of mastery he had hoped to impose upon her, his first whispered words were: “God damn you!”
He heard no movement from her.
Then he remembered the discovery which the moments of passion had wiped off his mind.
“Who was he?” he asked.
“Howard Roark,” she answered.
“All right,” he snapped, “you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to!”
He switched on the light. He saw her lying still, naked, her head thrown back. Her face looked peaceful, innocent, clean. She said to the ceiling, her voice gentle: “Peter, if I could do this…I can do anything now….”
“If you think I’m going to bother you often, if that’s your idea of…”
“As often or as seldom as you wish, Peter.”
Next morning, entering the dining room for breakfast, Dominique found a florist’s box, long and white, resting across her plate.
“What’s that?” she asked the maid.
“It was brought this morning, madam, with instructions to be put on the breakfast table.”
The box was addressed to Mrs. Peter Keating. Dominique opened it. It contained a few branches of white lilac, more extravagantly luxurious than orchids at this time of the year. There was a small card with a name written upon it in large letters that still held the quality of a hand’s dashing movement, as if the letters were laughing on the pasteboard: “Ellsworth M. Toohey.”
“How nice!” said Keating. “I wondered why we hadn’t heard from him at all yesterday.”
“Please put them in water, Mary,” said Dominique, handing the box to the maid.
In the afternoon Dominique telephoned Toohey and invited him for dinner.
The dinner took place a few days later. Keating’s mother had pleaded some previous engagement and escaped for the evening; she explained it to herself by believing that she merely needed time to get used to things. So there were only three places set on the dining-room table, candles in crystal holders, a centerpiece of blue flowers and glass bubbles.
When Toohey entered he bowed to his hosts in a manner proper to a court reception. Dominique looked like a society hostess who had always been a society hostess and could not possibly be imagined as anything else.
“Well, Ellsworth? Well?” Keating asked, with a gesture that included the hall, the air and Dominique.
“My dear Peter,” said Toohey, “let’s skip the obvious.”
Dominique led the way into the living room. She wore a dinner dress–a white satin blouse tailored like a man’s, and a long black skirt, straight and simple as the polished planes of her hair. The narrow band of the skirt about her waistline seemed to state that two hands could encircle her waist completely or snap her figure in half without much effort. The short sleeves left her arms bare, and she wore a plain gold bracelet, too large and heavy for her thin wrist. She had an appearance of elegance become perversion, an appearance of wise, dangerous maturity achieved by looking like a very young girl.
“Ellsworth, isn’t it wonderful?” said Keating, watching Dominique as one watches a fat bank account. “No less than I expected,” said Toohey. “And no more.” At the dinner table Keating did most of the talking. He seemed possessed by a talking jag. He turned over words with the sensuous abandon of a cat rolling in catnip.
“Actually, Ellsworth, it was Dominique who invited you. I didn’t ask her to. You’re our first formal guest. I think that’s wonderful. My wife and my best friend. I’ve always had the silly idea that you two didn’t like each other. God knows where I get those notions. But this is what makes me so damn happy–the three of us, together.”
“Then you don’t believe in mathematics, do you, Peter?” said Toohey. “Why the surprise? Certain figures in combination have to give certain results. Granting three entities such as Dominique, you and I–this had to be the inevitable sum.”
“They say three’s a crowd,” laughed Keating. “But that’s bosh. Two are better than one, and sometimes three are better than two, it all depends.”
“The only thing wrong with that old cliché,” said Toohey, “is the erroneous implication that ‘a crowd’ is a term of opprobrium. It is quite the opposite. As you are so merrily discovering. Three, I might add, is a mystic key number. As for instance, the Holy Trinity. Or the triangle, without which we would have no movie industry. There are so many variations upon the triangle, not necessarily unhappy. Like the three of us–with me serving as understudy for the hypotenuse, quite an appropriate substitution, since I’m replacing my antipode, don’t you think so, Dominique?”
They were finishing dessert when Keating was called to the telephone. They could hear his impatient voice in the next room, snapping instructions to a draftsman who was working late on a rush job and needed help. Toohey turned, looked at Dominique and smiled. The smile said everything her manner had not allowed to be said earlier. There was no visible movement on her face, as she held his glance, but there was a change of expression, as if she were acknowledging his meaning instead of refusing to understand it. He would have preferred the closed look of refusal. The acceptance was infinitely more scornful.
“So you’ve come back to the fold, Dominique?”
“Yes, Ellsworth.”
“No more pleas for mercy?”
“Does it appear as if they will be necessary?”
“No. I admire you, Dominique….How do you like it? I should imagine Peter is not bad, though not as good as the man we’re both thinking of, who’s probably superlative, but you’ll never have a chance to learn.”
She did not look disgusted; she looked genuinely puzzled.
“What are you talking about, Ellsworth?”
“Oh, come, my dear, we’re past pretending now, aren’t we? You’ve been in love with Roark from that first moment you saw him in Kiki Holcombe’s drawing room–or shall I be honest?–you wanted to sleep with him–but he wouldn’t spit at you–hence all your subsequent behavior.”
“Is that what you thought?” she asked quietly. “Wasn’t it obvious? The woman scorned. As obvious as the fact that Roark had to be the man you’d want. That you’d want him in the most primitive way. And that he’d never know you existed.”
“I overestimated you, Ellsworth,” she said. She had lost all interest in his presence, even the need of caution. She looked bored. He frowned, puzzled.
Keating came back. Toohey slapped his shoulder as he passed by on the way to his seat.
“Before I go, Peter, we must have a chat about the rebuilding of the Stoddard Temple. I want you to bitch that up, too.”
“Ellsworth…!” he gasped.
Toohey laughed. “Don’t be stuffy, Peter. Just a little professional vulgarity. Dominique won’t mind. She’s an ex-newspaper woman.”
“What’s the matter, Ellsworth?” Dominique asked. “Feeling pretty desperate? The weapons aren’t up to your usual standard.” She rose. “Shall we have coffee in the drawing room?”
Hopton Stoddard added a generous sum to the award he had won from Roark, and the Stoddard Temple was rebuilt for its new purpose by a group of architects chosen by Ellsworth Toohey: Peter Keating, Gordon L. Prescott, John Erik Snyte and somebody named Gus Webb, a boy of twenty-four who liked to utter obscenities when passing well-bred women on the street, and who had never handled an architectural commission of his own. Three of these men had social and professional standing; Gus Webb had none; Toohey included him for that reason. Of the four Gus Webb had the loudest voice and the greatest self-assurance. Gus Webb said he was afraid of nothing; he meant it. They were all members of the Council of American Builders.
The Council of American Builders had grown. After the Stoddard trial many earnest discussions were held informally in the club rooms of the A.G.A. The attitude of the A.G.A. toward Ellsworth Toohey had not been cordial, particularly since the establishment of his Council. But the trial brought a subtle change; many members pointed out that the article in “One Small Voice” had actually brought about the Stoddard lawsuit; and that a man who could force clients to sue was a man to be treated with caution. So it was suggested that Ellsworth Toohey should be invited to address the A.G.A. at one of its luncheons. Some members objected, Guy Francon among them. The most passionate objector was a young architect who made an eloquent speech, his voice trembling with the embarrassment of speaking in public for the first time; he said that he admired Ellsworth Toohey and had always agreed with Toohey’s social ideals, but if a group of people felt that some person was acquiring power over them, that was the time to fight such a person. The majority overruled him. Ellsworth Toohey was asked to speak at the luncheon, the attendance was enormous and Toohey made a witty, gracious speech. Many members of the A.G.A. joined the Council of American Builders, John Erik Snyte among the first.