The Fountainhead

They looked down the stairs and then looked at each other.

"It's horrible," said Dominique.

"It's great," said Roark.

"He can't help you, no matter what he does."

"I know he can't. That's not the point."

"He's risking everything he has to save you. He doesn't know he'll lose me if you're saved."

"Dominique, which will be worse for him — to lose you or to lose his crusade?" She nodded, understanding. He added: "You know that it's not me he wants to save. I'm only the excuse."

She lifted her hand. She touched his cheekbone, a faint pressure of her fingertips. She could allow herself nothing else. She turned and went on to her bedroom, and heard him closing the guestroom door.

"Is it not appropriate," wrote Lancelot Clokey in a syndicated article, "that Howard Roark is being defended by the Wynand papers? If anyone doubts the moral issues involved in this appalling case, here is the proof of what's what and who stands where. The Wynand papers — that stronghold of yellow journalism, vulgarity, corruption and muckraking, that organized insult to public taste and decency, that intellectual underworld ruled by a man who has less conception of principles than a ca

"All this fancy talk going 'round," said Gus Webb in a public speech, "is a lot of bull. Here's the plain dope. That guy Wynand's salted away plenty, and I mean plenty, by ski

"We have it from an unimpeachable source," wrote a radical newspaper, "that Cortlandt was only the first step in a gigantic plot to blow up every housing project, every public power plant, post office and schoolhouse in the U.S.A. The conspiracy is headed by Gail Wynand — as we can see — and by other bloated capitalists of his kind, including some of our biggest moneybags."

"Too little attention has been paid to the feminine angle of this case," wrote Sally Brent in the New Frontiers. "The part played by Mrs. Gail Wynand is certainly highly dubious, to say the least. Isn't it just the cutest coincidence that it was Mrs. Wynand who just so conveniently sent the watchman away at just the right time? And that her husband is now raising the roof to defend Mr. Roark? If we weren't blinded by a stupid, senseless, old-fashioned sense of gallantry where a so-called beautiful woman is concerned, we wouldn't allow that part of the case to be hushed up. If we weren't overawed by Mrs. Wynand's social position and the so-called prestige of her husband — who's making an utter fool of himself — we'd ask a few question about the story that she almost lost her life in the disaster. How do we know she did? Doctors can be bought, just like anybody else, and Mr. Gail Wynand is an expert in such matters. If we consider all this, we might well see the outlines of something that looks like a most revolting 'design for living.'"

"The position taken by the Wynand press," wrote a quiet, conservative newspaper, "is inexplicable and disgraceful."

The circulation of the Ba

Roark was almost forgotten in the storm of indignation against Gail Wynand. The angriest protests came from Wynand's own public: from the Women's Clubs, the ministers, the mothers, the small shopkeepers. Alvah Scarret had to be kept away from the room where hampers of letters to the editor were being filled each day; he started by reading the letters — and his friends on the staff undertook to prevent a repetition of the experience, fearing a stroke.

The staff of the Ba

Gail Wynand noticed a kind of lingering tempo in every action around him. When he entered the Ba

"One Small Voice" kept silent about the Cortlandt case. Wynand had summoned Toohey to his office, the day after the explosion, and had said: "Listen, you. Not a word in your column. Understand? What you do or yell outside is none of my business — for the time being. But if you yell too much, I'll take care of you when this is over."

"Yes, Mr. Wynand."

"As far as your column is concerned, you're deaf, dumb and blind. You've never heard of any explosion. You've never heard of anyone named Roark. You don't know what the word Cortlandt means. So long as you're in this building."

"Yes, Mr. Wynand."

"And don't let me see too much of you around here."

"Yes, Mr. Wynand."

Wynand's lawyer, an old friend who had served him for years, tried to stop him.

"Gail, what's the matter? You're acting like a child. Like a green amateur. Pull yourself together, man."

"Shut up," said Wynand.

"Gail, you are ... you were the greatest newspaperman on earth. Do I have to tell you the obvious? An unpopular cause is a dangerous business for anyone. For a popular newspaper — it's suicide."

"If you don't shut your mouth, I'll send you packing and get myself another shyster."

Wynand began to argue about the case — with the prominent men he met at business luncheons and di

He heard a few answers:

"Yes, Gail, yes, sure. But on the other hand, I think it was damn selfish of the man. And that's the trouble with the world today — selfishness. Too much selfishness everywhere. That's what Lancelot Clokey said in his book — swell book, all about his childhood, you read it, saw your picture with Clokey. Clokey's been all over the world, he knows what he's talking about."

"Yes, Gail, but aren't you kind of old-fashioned about it? What's all that great man stuff? What's great about a glorified bricklayer? Who's great anyway? We're all just a lot of glands and chemicals and whatever we ate for breakfast. I think Lois Cook explained it very well in that beautiful little — what's its name? — yes, The Gallant Gallstone. Yes, sir. Your own Ba