The Fountainhead

"Of course I'm happy, I'm very grateful and all that, but why in blazes should you think of retiring now?"

"I don't mean that. I mean — why don't you look happy when I say that it will be yours? I ... I'd like you to be happy about that, Peter."

"For God's sake, Guy, you're being morbid, you're ... "

"Peter, it's very important to me — that you should be happy at what I'm leaving you. That you should be proud of it. And you are, aren't you, Peter? You are?"

"Well, who wouldn't be?" He did not look at Francon. He could not stand the sound of pleading in Francon's voice.

"Yes, who wouldn't be? Of course ... And you are, Peter?"

"What do you want?" snapped Keating angrily.

"I want you to feel proud of me, Peter," said Francon humbly, simply, desperately. "I want to know that I've accomplished something. I want to feel that it had some meaning. At the last summing up, I want to be sure that it wasn't all — for nothing."

"You're not sure of that? You're not sure?" Keating's eyes were murderous, as if Francon were a sudden danger to him.

"What's the matter, Peter?" Francon asked gently, almost indifferently.

"God damn you, you have no right — not to be sure! At your age, with your name, with your prestige, with your ... "

"I want to be sure, Peter. I've worked very hard."

"But you're not sure!" He was furious and frightened, and so he wanted to hurt, and he flung out the one thing that could hurt most, forgetting that it hurt him, not Francon, that Francon wouldn't know, had never known, wouldn't even guess: "Well, I know somebody who'll be sure, at the end of his life, who'll be so God-damn sure I'd like to cut his damn throat for it!"

"Who?" asked Francon quietly, without interest. "Guy! Guy, what's the matter with us? What are we talking about?"

"I don't know," said Francon. He looked tired.

That evening Francon came to Keating's house for di

"Forgive me," he muttered, "I'm just stupid ... This is really wonderful ... "

Guests kept coming in all evening, uninvited and una

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, i

"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 di

The di

When Toohey entered he bowed to his hosts in a ma

"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 di

"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 di

"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?"