The Fountainhead

He felt no concern over the "We Don't Read Wynand" campaign. He obtained one of their men's-room stickers, pasted it on the windshield of his own Lincoln, added the words: "We don't either," and kept it there long enough to be discovered and snapped by a photographer from a neutral paper. In the course of his career he had been fought, damned, denounced by the greatest publishers of his time, by the shrewdest coalitions of financial power. He could not summon any apprehension over the activities of somebody named Gus Webb.

He knew that the Ba

He could not rouse himself to full action. He had never felt a greater desire to work. He entered his office each morning with important eagerness. But within an hour he found himself studying the joints of the paneling on the walls and reciting nursery rhymes in his mind. It was not boredom, not the satisfaction of a yawn, but more like the gnawing pull of wishing to yawn and not quite making it. He could not say that he disliked his work. It had merely become distasteful; not enough to force a decision; not enough to make him clench his fists; just enough to contract his nostrils.

He thought dimly that the cause lay in that new trend of the public taste. He saw no reason why he should not follow it and play on it as expertly as he had played on all other fads. But he could not follow. He felt no moral scruples. It was not a positive stand rationally taken; not defiance in the name of a cause of importance; just a fastidious feeling, something pertaining almost to chastity: the hesitation one feels before putting one's foot down into muck. He thought: It doesn't matter — it will not last — I'll be back when the wave swings on to another theme — I think I'd rather sit this one out.

He could not say why the encounter with Alvah Scarret gave him a feeling of uneasiness, sharper than usual. He thought it was fu

I ought to fire Alvah, he thought — and then laughed at himself, aghast: fire Alvah Scarret? — one might as well think of stopping the earth — or — of the unthinkable — of closing the Ba

But through the months of that summer and fall, there were days when he loved the Ba

The word had come down from his office to every department concerned: Plug Howard Roark. In the art section, the real-estate section, the editorials, the columns, mentions of Roark and his buildings began to appear regularly. There were not many occasions when one could give publicity to an architect, and buildings had little news value, but the Ba

He never spoke of it to Roark, and Roark never mentioned it. They did not discuss the Ba

Coming home to his new house in the evening, Wynand saw the Ba

Then he spoke of it, one evening. He turned the pages until he came to an article on the general theme of summer resorts, most of which was a description of Monadnock Valley. He raised his head to glance at Dominique across the room; she sat on the floor by the fireplace. He said:

"Thank you, dear."

"For what, Gail?"

"For understanding when I would be glad to see the Ba

He walked to her and sat down on the floor beside her. He held her thin shoulders in the curve of his arm. He said:

"Think of all the politicians, movie stars, visiting grand dukes and sash weight murderers whom the Ba

"Yes, Gail ... "

"All this power I wanted, reached and never used.,. Now they'll see what I can do. I'll force them to recognize him as he should be recognized. I'll give him the fame he deserves. Public opinion? Public opinion is what I make it."

"Do you think he wants this?"

"Probably not. I don't care. He needs it and he's going to get it. I want him to have it. As an architect, he's public property. He can't stop a newspaper from writing about him if it wants to."

"All that copy on him — do you write it yourself?"

"Most of it."

"Gail, what a great journalist you could have been."

The campaign brought results, of a kind he had not expected. The general public remained blankly indifferent. But in the intellectual circles, in the art world, in the profession, people were laughing at Roark. Comments were reported to Wynand: "Roark? Oh yes, Wynand's pet."

"The Ba

"The genius of the yellow press."

"The Ba

"Wouldn't you know it? That's what I've always thought of Roark — the kind of talent fit for the Wynand papers."

"We'll see," said Wynand contemptuously — and continued his private crusade.

He gave Roark every commission of importance whose owners were open to pressure. Since spring, he had brought to Roark's office the contracts for a yacht club on the Hudson, an office building, two private residences. "I'll get you more than you can handle," he said. "I'll make you catch up with all the years they've made you waste."

Austen Heller said to Roark one evening: "If I may be so presumptuous, I think you need advice, Howard. Yes, of course, I mean this preposterous business of Mr. Gail Wynand. You and he as inseparable friends upsets every rational concept I've ever held. After all, there are distinct classes of humanity — no, I'm not talking Toohey's language — but there are certain boundary lines among men which ca

"Yes, there are. But nobody has ever given the proper statement of where they must be drawn."

"Well, the friendship is your own business. But there's one aspect of it that must be stopped — and you're going to listen to me for once."

"I'm listening."

"I think it's fine, all those commissions he's dumping on you. I'm sure he'll be rewarded for that and lifted several rungs in hell, where he's certain to go. But he must stop that publicity he's splashing you with in the Ba

"I know it is."

"Are you going to make him stop?"

"No."

"But why in blazes?"

"I said I'd listen, Austen. I didn't say I'd speak about him."

Late one afternoon in the fall Wynand came to Roark's office, as he often did at the end of a day, and when they walked out together, he said: "It's a nice evening. Let's go for a walk, Howard. There's a piece of property I want you to see."

He led the way to Hell's Kitchen. They walked around a great rectangle — two blocks between Ninth Avenue and Eleventh, five blocks from north to south. Roark saw a grimy desolation of tenements, sagging hulks of what had been red brick, crooked doorways, rotting boards, strings of gray underclothing in narrow air shafts, not as a sign of life, but as a malignant growth of decomposition.