The Fountainhead

Late each afternoon he telephoned Dominique in the country. "Fine. Everything under control. Don't listen to panic-mongers ... No, to hell with it, you know I don't want to talk about the damn paper. Tell me what the garden looks like ... Did you go swimming today? ... Tell me about the lake ... What dress are you wearing? ... Listen to WLX tonight, at eight, they'll have your pet — Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto ... Of course I have time to keep informed about everything ... Oh, all right, I see one can't fool an ex-newspaper woman, I did go over the radio page ... Of course we have plenty of help, it's just that I can't quite trust some of the new boys and I had a moment to spare ... Above all, don't come to town. You promised me that ... Good night, dearest ... "

He hung up and sat looking at the telephone, smiling. The thought of the countryside was like the thought of a continent beyond an ocean that could not be crossed; it gave him a sense of being locked in a besieged fortress and he liked that — not the fact, but the feeling. His face looked like a throwback to some distant ancestor who had fought on the ramparts of a castle.

One evening he went out to the restaurant across the street; he had not eaten a complete meal for days. The streets were still light when he came back — the placid brown haze of summer, as if dulled sunrays remained stretched too comfortably on the warm air to undertake a movement of withdrawal, even though the sun had long since gone; it made the sky look fresh and the street dirty; there were patches of brown and tired orange in the corners of old buildings. He saw pickets pacing in front of the Ba

His eyes kept following one woman. Her hips began at her ankles, bulging over the tight straps of her shoes; she had square shoulders and a long coat of cheap brown tweed over a huge square body. She had small white hands, the kind that would drop things all over the kitchen. She had an incision of a mouth, without lips, and she waddled as she moved, but she moved with surprising briskness. Her steps defied the whole world to hurt her, with a malicious slyness that seemed to say she would like nothing better, because what a joke it would be on the world if it tried to hurt her, just try it and see, just try it. Wynand knew she had never been employed on the Ba

He thought of the nights when he had slept on the couch in the old Ba

He hurried into the building. The presses were rolling. He stood and listened for a while.

At night the building was quiet. It seemed bigger, as if sound took space and vacated it; there were panels of light at open doors, between long stretches of dim hallways. A lone typewriter clicked somewhere, evenly, like a dripping faucet. Wynand walked through the halls. He thought that men had been willing to work for him when he plugged known crooks for municipal elections, when he glamorized red-light districts, when he ruined reputations by scandalous libel, when he sobbed over the mothers of gangsters. Talented men, respected men had been eager to work for him. Now he was being honest for the first time in his career. He was leading his greatest crusade — with the help of finks, drifters, drunkards, and humble drudges too passive to quit. The guilt, he thought, was not perhaps with those who now refused to work for him.

The sun hit the square crystal inkstand on his desk. It made Wynand think of a cool drink on a lawn, white clothes, the feel of grass under bare elbows. He tried not to look at the gay glitter and went on writing. It was a morning in the second week of the strike. He had retreated to his office for an hour and given orders not to be disturbed; he had an article to finish; he knew he wanted the excuse, one hour of not seeing what went on in the building.

The door of his office opened without a

He got up, a kind of quiet obedience in his movement, permitting himself no questions. She wore a coral linen suit, she stood as if the lake were behind her and the sunlight rose from the surface to the folds of her clothes. She said:

"Gail, I've come for my old job on the Ba

He stood looking at her silently; then he smiled; it was a smile of convalescence.

He turned to the desk, picked up the sheets he had written, handed them to her and said:

"Take this to the back room. Pick up the wire flimsies and bring them to me. Then report to Ma

The impossible, the not to be achieved in word, glance or gesture, the complete union of two beings in complete understanding, was done by a small stack of paper passing from his hand to hers. Their fingers did not touch. She turned and walked out of the office.

Within two days, it was as if she had never left the staff of the Ba

Scarret could not understand her tone, her ma

"Can the commentaries, Alvah. We haven't the time."

She wrote a brilliant review of a movie she hadn't seen. She dashed off a report on a convention she hadn't attended. She batted out a string of recipes for the "Daily Dishes" column, when the lady in charge failed to show up one morning. "I didn't know you could cook," said Scarret. "I didn't either," said Dominique. She went out one night to cover a dock fire, when it was found that the only man on duty had passed out on the floor of the men's room. "Good job," Wynand told her when he read the story, "but try that again and you'll get fired. If you want to stay, you're not to step out of the building."

This was his only comment on her presence. He spoke to her when necessary, briefly and simply, as to any other employee. He gave orders. There were days when they did not have time to see each other. She slept on a couch in the library. Occasionally, in the evening, she would come to his office, for a short rest, when they could take it, and then they talked, about nothing in particular, about small events of the day's work, gaily, like any married couple gossiping about the normal routine of their common life.

They did not speak of Roark or Cortlandt. She had noticed Roark's picture on the wall of his office and asked: "When did you hang that up?"

"Over a year ago." It had been their only reference to Roark. They did not discuss the growing public fury against the Ba