She knew what she had to do. But she would give herself a few days. She thought, I’ve learned to bear anything except happiness. I must learn how to carry it. How not to break under it. It’s the only discipline I’ll need from now on.
Roark stood at the window of his house in Monadnock Valley. He had rented the house for the summer; he went there when he wanted loneliness and rest. It was a quiet evening. The window opened on a small ledge in a frame of trees, hanging against the sky. A strip of sunset light stretched above the dark treetops. He knew that there were houses below, but they could not be seen. He was as grateful as any other tenant for the way in which he had built this place.
He heard the sound of a car approaching up the road at the other side. He listened, astonished. He expected no guests. The car stopped. He walked to open the door. He felt no astonishment when he saw Dominique.
She came in as if she had left this house half an hour ago. She wore no hat, no stockings, just sandals and a dress intended for back country roads, a narrow sheath of dark blue linen with short sleeves, like a smock for gardening. She did not look as if she had driven across three states, but as if she were returning from a walk down the hill. He knew that this was to be the solemnity of the moment–that it needed no solemnity; it was not to be stressed and set apart, it was not this particular evening, but the completed meaning of seven years behind them.
“Howard.”
He stood as if he were looking at the sound of his name in the room. He had all he had wanted.
But there was one thought that remained as pain, even now. He said:
“Dominique, wait till he recovers.”
“You know he won’t recover.”
“Have a little pity on him.”
“Don’t speak their language.”
“He had no choice.”
“He could have closed the paper.”
“It was his life.”
“This is mine.”
He did not know that Wynand had once said all love is exception-making; and Wynand would not know that Roark had loved him enough to make his greatest exception, one moment when he had tried to compromise. Then he knew it was useless, like all sacrifices. What he said was his signature under her decision:
“I love you.”
She looked about the room, to let the ordinary reality of walls and chairs help her keep the discipline she had been learning for this moment. The walls he had designed, the chairs he used, a package of his cigarettes on a table, the routine necessities of life that could acquire splendor when life became what it was now.
“Howard, I know what you intend to do at the trial. So it won’t make any difference if they learn the truth about us.”
“It won’t make any difference.”
“When you came that night and told me about Cortlandt, I didn’t try to stop you. I knew you had to do it, it was your time to set the terms on which you could go on. This is my time. My Cortlandt explosion. You must let me do it my way. Don’t question me. Don’t protect me. No matter what I do.”
“I know what you’ll do.”
“You know that I have to?”
“Yes.”
She bent one arm from the elbow, fingers lifted, in a short, backward jolt, as if tossing the subject over her shoulder. It was settled and not to be discussed.
She turned away from him, she walked across the room, to let the casual ease of her steps make this her home, to state that his presence was to be the rule for ail her coming days and she had no need to do what she wanted most at this moment: stand and look at him. She knew also what she was delaying, because she was not ready and would never be ready. She stretched her hand out for his package of cigarettes on the table.
His fingers closed over her wrist and he pulled her hand back. He pulled her around to face him, and then he held her and his mouth was on hers. She knew that every moment of seven years when she had wanted this and stopped the pain and thought she had won, was not past, had never been stopped, had lived on, stored, adding hunger to hunger, and now she had to feel it all, the touch of his body, the answer and the waiting together.
She didn’t know whether her discipline had helped; not too well, she thought, because she saw that he had lifted her in his arms, carried her to a chair and sat down, holding her on his knees; he laughed without sound, as he would have laughed at a child, but the firmness of his hands holding her showed concern and a kind of steadying caution. Then it seemed simple, she had nothing to hide from him, she whispered: “Yes, Howard…that much…” and he said: “It was very hard for me–all these years.” And the years were ended.
She slipped down, to sit on the floor, her elbows propped on his knees, she looked up at him and smiled, she knew that she could not have reached this white serenity except as the sum of all the colors, of all the violence she had known. “Howard…willingly, completely, and always…without reservations, without fear of anything they can do to you or me…in any way you wish…as your wife or your mistress, secretly or openly…here, or in a furnished room I’ll take in some town near a jail where I’ll see you through a wire net…it won’t matter….Howard, if you win the trial–even that won’t matter too much. You’ve won long ago….I’ll remain what I am, and I’ll remain with you–now and ever–in any way you want….”
He held her hands in his, she saw his shoulders sagging down to her, she saw him helpless, surrendered to this moment, as she was–and she knew that even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness, yet they could let each other see it without need of protection. It was growing dark, the room was indistinguishable, only the window remained and his shoulders against the sky in the window.
She awakened with the sun in her eyes. She lay on her back, looking at the ceiling as she had looked at the leaves. Not to move, to guess by hints, to see everything through the greater intensity of implication. The broken triangles of light on the angular modeling of the ceiling’s plastic tiles meant that it was morning and that this was a bedroom at Monadnock, the geometry of fire and structure above her designed by him. The fire was white–that meant it was very early and the rays came through clean country air, with nothing anywhere in space between this bedroom and the sun. The weight of the blanket, heavy and intimate on her naked body, was everything that had been last night. And the skin she felt against her arm was Roark asleep beside her.
She slipped out of bed. She stood at the window, her arms raised, holding on to the frame at each side. She thought if she looked back she would see no shadow of her body on the floor, she felt as if the sunlight went straight through her, because her body had no weight.
But she had to hurry before he awakened. She found his pyjamas in a dresser drawer and put them on. She went to the living room, closing the door carefully behind her. She picked up the telephone and asked for the nearest sheriff’s office.
“This is Mrs. Gail Wynand,” she said. “I am speaking from the house of Mr. Howard Roark at Monadnock Valley. I wish to report that my star-sapphire ring was stolen here last night….About five thousand dollars….It was a present from Mr. Roark….Can you get here within an hour?…Thank you.”
She went to the kitchen, made coffee and stood watching the glow of the electric coil under the coffee pot, thinking that it was the most beautiful light on earth.
She set the table by the large window in the living room. He came out, wearing nothing but a dressing gown, and laughed at the sight of her in his pyjamas. She said: “Don’t dress. Sit down. Let’s have breakfast.”
They were finishing when they heard the sound of the car stopping outside. She smiled and walked to open the door.
There were a sheriff, a deputy and two reporters from local papers.
“Good morning,” said Dominique. “Come in.”
“Mrs….Wynand?” said the sheriff.
“That’s right. Mrs. Gail Wynand. Come in. Sit down.”
In the ludicrous folds of the pyjamas, with dark cloth bulging over a belt wound tightly, with sleeves hanging over her fingertips, she had all the poised elegance she displayed in her best hostess gown. She was the only one who seemed to find nothing unusual in the situation.