He extended the contract across the desk. Keating saw the pale blue rectangle of the check held to the top of the page by a paper clip. The clip flashed silver in the light of the desk lamp.
Keating’s hand did not reach to meet the paper. He said, his chin moving awkwardly to frame the words: “I don’t want it. You can have my consent for nothing.” He saw a look of astonishment–and almost of kindness–on Wynand’s face.
“You don’t want it? You don’t want Stoneridge either?”
“I want Stoneridge!” Keating’s hand rose and snatched the paper. “I want it all! Why should you get away with it? Why should I care?”
Wynand got up. He said, relief and regret in his voice: “Right, Mr. Keating. For a moment, you had almost justified your marriage. Let it remain what it was. Good night.”
Keating did not go home. He walked to the apartment of Neil Dumont, his new designer and best friend. Neil Dumont was a lanky, anemic society youth, with shoulders stooped under the burden of too many illustrious ancestors. He was not a good designer, but he had connections; he was obsequious to Keating in the office, and Keating was obsequious to him after office hours.
He found Dumont at home. Together, they got Gordon Prescott and Vincent Knowlton, and started out to make a wild night of it. Keating did not drink much. He paid for everything. He paid more than necessary. He seemed anxious to find things to pay for. He gave exorbitant tips. He kept asking: “We’re friends–aren’t we friends?–aren’t we?” He looked at the glasses around him and he watched the lights dancing in the liquid. He looked at the three pairs of eyes; they were blurred, but they turned upon him occasionally with contentment. They were soft and comforting.
That evening, her bags packed and ready in her room, Dominique went to see Steven Mallory.
She had not seen Roark for twenty months. She had called on Mallory once in a while. Mallory knew that these visits were breakdowns in a struggle she would not name; he knew that she did not want to come, that her rare evenings with him were time torn out of her life. He never asked any questions and he was always glad to see her. They talked quietly, with a feeling of companionship such as that of an old married couple; as if he had possessed her body, and the wonder of it had long since been consumed, and nothing remained but an untroubled intimacy. He had never touched her body, but he had possessed it in a deeper kind of ownership when he had done her statue, and they could not lose the special sense of each other it had given them.
He smiled when he opened the door and saw her.
“Hello, Dominique.”
“Hello, Steve. Interrupting you?”
“No. Come in.”
He had a studio, a huge, sloppy place in an old building. She noticed the change since her last visit. The room had an air of laughter, like a breath held too long and released. She saw second-hand furniture, an Oriental rug of rare texture and sensuous color, jade ash trays, pieces of sculpture that came from historical excavations, anything he had wished to seize, helped by the sudden fortune of Wynand’s patronage. The walls looked strangely bare above the gay clutter. He had bought no paintings. A single sketch hung over his studio–Roark’s original drawing of the Stoddard Temple.
She looked slowly about her, noting every object and the reason for its presence. He kicked two chairs toward the fireplace and they sat down, one at each side of the fire.
He said, quite simply:
“Clayton, Ohio.”
“Doing what?”
“A new building for Janer’s Department Store. Five stories. On Main Street.”
“How long has he been there?”
“About a month.”
It was the first question he answered whenever she came here, without making her ask it. His simple ease spared her the necessity of explanation or pretense; his manner included no comment.
“I’m going away tomorrow, Steve.”
“For long?”
“Six weeks. Reno.”
“I’m glad.”
“I’d rather not tell you now what I’ll do when I come back. You won’t be glad.”
“I’ll try to be–if it’s what you want to do.”
“It’s what I want to do.”
One log still kept its shape on the pile of coals in the fireplace; it was checkered into small squares and it glowed without flame, like a solid string of lighted windows. He reached down and threw a fresh log on the coals. It cracked the string of windows in half and sent sparks shooting up against the sooted bricks.
He talked about his own work. She listened, as if she were an emigrant hearing her homeland’s language for a brief while.
In a pause, she asked:
“How is he, Steve?”
“As he’s always been. He doesn’t change, you know.”
He kicked the log. A few coals rolled out. He pushed them back. He said:
“I often think that he’s the only one of us who’s achieved immortality. I don’t mean in the sense of fame and I don’t mean that he won’t die some day. But he’s living it. I think he is what the conception really means. You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they’re not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict–and they call it growth. At the end there’s nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they have never held for a single moment? But Howard–one can imagine him existing forever.”
She sat looking at the fire. It gave a deceptive semblance of life to her face. After a while he asked: “How do you like all the new things I got?”
“I like them. I like your having them.”
“I didn’t tell you what happened to me since I saw you last. The completely incredible. Gail Wynand…”
“Yes, I know about that.”
“You do? Wynand, of all people–what on earth made him discover me?”
“I know that too. I’ll tell you when I come back.”
“He has an amazing judgment. Amazing for him. He bought the best.”
“Yes, he would.”
Then she asked, without transition, yet he knew that she was not speaking of Wynand:
“Steve, has he ever asked you about me?”
“No.”
“Have you told him about my coming here?”
“No.”
“Is that–for my sake, Steve?”
“No. For his.”
He knew he had told her everything she wanted to know.
She said, rising:
“Let’s have some tea. Show me where you keep your stuff. I’ll fix it.”
Dominique left for Reno early in the morning. Keating was still asleep and she did not awaken him to say good-bye.
When he opened his eyes, he knew that she was gone, before he looked at the clock, by the quality of the silence in the house. He thought he should say “Good riddance,” but he did not say it and he did not feel it. What he felt was a vast, flat sentence without subject–“It’s no use”–related neither to himself nor to Dominique. He was alone and there was no necessity to pretend anything. He lay in bed, on his back, his arms flung out helplessly. His face looked humble and his eyes bewildered. He felt that it was an end and a death, but he did not mean the loss of Dominique.
He got up and dressed. In the bathroom he found a hand towel she had used and discarded. He picked it up, he pressed his face to it and held it for a long time, not in sorrow, but in nameless emotion, not understanding, knowing only that he had loved her twice–on that evening when Toohey telephoned, and now. Then he opened his fingers and let the towel slip down to the floor, like a liquid running between his fingers.
He went to his office and worked as usual. Nobody knew of his divorce and he felt no desire to inform anyone. Neil Dumont winked at him and drawled: “I say, Pete, you look peaked.” He shrugged and turned his back. The sight of Dumont made him sick today.
He left the office early. A vague instinct kept pulling at him, like hunger, at first, then taking shape. He had to see Ellsworth Toohey. He had to reach Toohey. He felt like the survivor of a shipwreck swimming toward a distant light.
That evening he dragged himself to Ellsworth Toohey’s apartment. When he entered, he felt dimly glad of his self-control, because Toohey seemed to notice nothing in his face.
“Oh, hello, Peter,” said Toohey airily. “Your sense of timing leaves much to be desired. You catch me on the worst possible evening. Busy as all hell. But don’t let that bother you. What are friends for but to inconvenience one? Sit down, sit down, I’ll be with you in a minute.”