“We have to have the Palmers,” she said, “so that we can get the commission for their new store building. We have to get that commission so that we can entertain the Eddingtons for dinner on Saturday. The Eddingtons have no commissions to give, but they’re in the Social Register. The Palmers bore you and the Eddingtons snub you. But you have to flatter people whom you despise in order to impress other people who despise you.”
“Why do you have to say things like that?”
“Would you like to look at this calendar, Peter?”
“Well, that’s what everybody does. That’s what everybody lives for.”
“Yes, Peter. Almost everybody.”
“If you don’t approve, why don’t you say so?”
“Have I said anything about not approving?”
He thought back carefully. “No,” he admitted. “No, you haven’t….But it’s the way you put things.”
“Would you rather I put it in a more involved way–as I did about Vincent Knowlton?”
“I’d rather…” Then he cried: “I’d rather you’d express an opinion, God damn it, just once!”
She asked, in the same level monotone: “Whose opinion, Peter? Gordon Prescott’s? Ralston Holcombe’s? Ellsworth Toohey’s?”
He turned to her, leaning on the arm of his chair, half rising, suddenly tense. The thing between them was beginning to take shape. He had a first hint of words that would name it.
“Dominique,” he said softly, reasonably, “that’s it. Now I know. I know what’s been the matter all the time.”
“Has anything been the matter?”
“Wait. This is terribly important. Dominique, you’ve never said, not once, what you thought. Not about anything. You’ve never expressed a desire. Not of any kind.”
“What’s wrong about that?”
“But it’s…it’s like death. You’re not real. You’re only a body. Look, Dominique, you don’t know it, I’ll try to explain. You understand what death is? When a body can’t move any more, when it has no…no will, no meaning. You understand? Nothing. The absolute nothing. Well, your body moves–but that’s all. The other, the thing inside you, your–oh, don’t misunderstand me, I’m not talking religion, but there’s no other word for it, so I’ll say: your soul–your soul doesn’t exist. No will, no meaning. There’s no real you any more.”
“What’s the real me?” she asked. For the first time, she looked attentive; not compassionate; but, at least, attentive.
“What’s the real anyone?” he said, encouraged. “It’s not just the body. It’s…it’s the soul.”
“What is the soul?”
“It’s–you. The thing inside you.”
“The thing that thinks and values and makes decisions?”
“Yes! Yes, that’s it. And the thing that feels. You’ve–you’ve given it up.”
“So there are two things that one can’t give up: One’s thoughts and one’s desires?”
“Yes! Oh, you do understand! So you see, you’re like a corpse to everybody around you. A kind of walking death. That’s worse than any active crime. It’s…”
“Negation?”
“Yes. Just blank negation. You’re not here. You’ve never been here. If you’d tell me that the curtains in this room are ghastly and if you’d rip them off and put up some you like–something of you would be real, here, in this room. But you never have. You’ve never told the cook what dessert you liked for dinner. You’re not here, Dominique. You’re not alive. Where’s your I?”
“Where’s yours, Peter?” she asked quietly.
He sat still, his eyes wide. She knew that his thoughts, in this moment, were clear and immediate like visual perception, that the act of thinking was an act of seeing a procession of years behind him.
“It’s not true,” he said at last, his voice hollow. “It’s not true.”
“What is not true?”
“What you said.”
“I’ve said nothing. I asked you a question.”
His eyes were begging her to speak, to deny. She rose, stood before him, and the taut erectness of her body was a sign of life, the life he had missed and begged for, a positive quality of purpose, but the quality of a judge.
“You’re beginning to see, aren’t you, Peter? Shall I make it clearer. You’ve never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn’t want to show it. You wanted an act to help your act–a beautiful, complicated act, all twists, trimmings and words. All words. You didn’t like what I said about Vincent Knowlton. You liked it when I said the same thing under cover of virtuous sentiments. You didn’t want me to believe. You only wanted me to convince you that I believed. My real soul, Peter? It’s real only when it’s independent–you’ve discovered that, haven’t you? It’s real only when it chooses curtains and desserts–you’re right about that–curtains, desserts and religions, Peter, and the shapes of buildings. But you’ve never wanted that. You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. Usually in the more vulgar kind of hotels. Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose. I gave you what you wanted. I became what you are, what your friends are, what most of humanity is so busy being–only with the trimmings. I didn’t go around spouting book reviews to hide my emptiness of judgment–I said I had no judgment. I didn’t borrow designs to hide my creative impotence–I created nothing. I didn’t say that equality is a noble conception and unity the chief goal of mankind–I just agreed with everybody. You call it death, Peter? That kind of death–I’ve imposed it on you and on everyone around us. But you–you haven’t done that. People are comfortable with you, they like you, they enjoy your presence. You’ve spared them the blank death. Because you’ve imposed it–on yourself.”
He said nothing. She walked away from him, and sat down again, waiting.
He got up. He made a few steps toward her. He said: “Dominique…” Then he was on his knees before her, clutching her, his head buried against her legs.
“Dominique, it’s not true–that I never loved you. I love you, I always have, it was not…just to show the others–that was not all–I loved you. There were two people–you and another person, a man, who always made me feel the same thing–not fear exactly, but like a wall, a steep wall to climb–like a command to rise–I don’t know where–but a feeling going up–I’ve always hated that man–but you, I wanted you–always–that’s why I married you–when I knew you despised me–so you should have forgiven me that marriage–you shouldn’t have taken your revenge like this–not like this, Dominique–Dominique, I can’t fight back, I–”
“Who is the man you hated, Peter?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Who is he?”
“Nobody. I…”
“Name him.”
“Howard Roark.”
She said nothing for a long time. Then she put her hand on his hair. The gesture had the form of gentleness.
“I never wanted to take a revenge on you, Peter,” she said softly.
“Then–why?”
“I married you for my own reasons. I acted as the world demands one should act. Only I can do nothing halfway. Those who can, have a fissure somewhere inside. Most people have many. They lie to themselves–not to know that. I’ve never lied to myself. So I had to do what you all do–only consistently and completely. I’ve probably destroyed you. If I could care, I’d say I’m sorry. That was not my purpose.”
“Dominique, I love you. But I’m afraid. Because you’ve changed something in me, ever since our wedding, since I said yes to you–even if I were to lose you now, I couldn’t go back to what I was before–you took something I had…”
“No. I took something you never had. I grant you that’s worse.”
“What?”
“It’s said that the worst thing one can do to a man is to kill his self-respect. But that’s not true. Self-respect is something that can’t be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man’s pretense at it.”
“Dominique, I…I don’t want to talk.”
She looked down at his face resting against her knees, and he saw pity in her eyes, and for one moment he knew what a dreadful thing true pity is, but he kept no knowledge of it, because he slammed his mind shut before the words in which he was about to preserve it.
She bent down and kissed his forehead. It was the first kiss she had ever given him.
“I don’t want you to suffer, Peter,” she said gently. “This, now, is real–it’s I–it’s my own words–I don’t want you to suffer–I can’t feel anything else–but I feel that much.”
He pressed his lips to her hand.
When he raised his head, she looked at him as if, for a moment, he was her husband. She said: “Peter, if you could hold on to it–to what you are now–”
“I love you,” he said.
They sat silently together for a long time. He felt no strain in the silence.