Hopton Stoddard received so many letters of sympathy that he began to feel quite happy. He had never been popular before. Ellsworth, he thought, was right; his brother men were forgiving him; Ellsworth was always right.
The better newspapers dropped the story after a while. But the Banner kept it going. It had been a boon to the Banner. Gail Wynand was away, sailing his yacht through the Indian Ocean, and Alvah Scarret was stuck for a crusade. This suited him. Ellsworth Toohey needed to make no suggestions; Scarret rose to the occasion all by himself.
He wrote about the decline of civilization and deplored the loss of the simple faith. He sponsored an essay contest for high-school students on "Why I Go to Church." He ran a series of illustrated articles on "The Churches of Our Childhood." He ran photographs of religious sculpture through the ages — the Sphinx, gargoyles, totem poles — and gave great prominence to pictures of Dominique's statue, with proper captions of indignation, but omitting the model's name. He ran cartoons of Roark as a barbarian with bearskin and club. He wrote many clever things about the Tower of Babel that could not reach heaven and about Icarus who flopped on his wax wings.
Ellsworth Toohey sat back and watched. He made two minor suggestions: he found, in the Banner's morgue, the photograph of Roark at the opening of the Enright House, the photograph of a man's face in a moment of exaltation, and he had it printed in the Banner, over the caption: "Are you happy, Mr. Superman?" He made Stoddard open the Temple to the public while awaiting the trial of his suit. The Temple attracted crowds of people who left obscene drawings and inscriptions on the pedestal of Dominique's statue.
There were a few who came, and saw, and admired the building in silence. But they were the kind who do not take part in public issues. Austen Heller wrote a furious article in defense of Roark and of the Temple. But he was not an authority on architecture or religion, and the article was drowned in the storm.
Howard Roark did nothing.
He was asked for a statement, and he received a group of reporters in his office. He spoke without anger. He said: "I can't tell anyone anything about my building. If I prepared a hash of words to stuff into other people's brains, it would be an insult to them and to me. But I am glad you came here. I do have something to say. I want to ask every man who is interested in this to go and see the building, to look at it and then to use the words of his own mind, if he cares to speak."
The Banner printed the interview as follows: "Mr. Roark, who seems to be a publicity hound, received reporters with an air of swaggering insolence and stated that the public mind was hash. He did not choose to talk, but he seemed well aware of the advertising angles in the situation. All he cared about, he explained, was to have his building seen by as many people as possible."
Roark refused to hire an attorney to represent him at the coming trial. He said he would handle his own defense and refused to explain how he intended to handle it, in spite of Austen Heller's angry protests.
"Austen, there are some rules I'm perfectly willing to obey. I'm willing to wear the kind of clothes everybody wears, to eat the same food and use the same subways. But there are some things which I can't do their way — and this is one of them."
"What do you know about courtrooms and law? He's going to win."
"To win what?"
"His case."
"Is the case of any importance? There's nothing I can do to stop him from touching the building. He owns it. He can blast it off the face of the earth or make a glue factory out of it. He can do it whether I win that suit or lose it."
"But he'll take your money to do it with."
"Yes. He might take my money."
Steven Mallory made no comment on anything. But his face looked as it had looked on the night Roark met him for the first time.
"Steve, talk about it, if it will make it easier for you," Roark said to him one evening.
"There's nothing to talk about," Mallory answered indifferently. "I told you I didn't think they'd let you survive."
"Rubbish. You have no right to be afraid for me."
"I'm not afraid for you. What would be the use? It's something else."
Days later, sitting on the window sill in Roark's room, looking out at the street, Mallory said suddenly:
"Howard, do you remember what I told you about the beast I'm afraid of? I know nothing about Ellsworth Toohey. I had never seen him before I shot at him. I had only read what he writes. Howard, I shot at him because I think he knows everything about that beast."
Dominique came to Roark's room on the evening when Stoddard announced his lawsuit. She said nothing. She put her bag down on a table and stood removing her gloves, slowly, as if she wished to prolong the intimacy of performing a routine gesture here, in his room; she looked down at her fingers. Then she raised her head. Her face looked as if she knew his worst suffering and it was hers and she wished to bear it like this, coldly, asking no words of mitigation.
"You're wrong," he said. They could always speak like this to each other, continuing a conversation they had not begun. His voice was gentle. "I don't feel that."
"I don't want to know."
"I want you to know. What you're thinking is much worse than the truth. I don't believe it matters to me — that they're going to destroy it. Maybe it hurts so much that I don't even know I'm hurt. But I don't think so. If you want to carry it for my sake, don't carry more than I do. I'm not capable of suffering completely. I never have. It goes only down to a certain point and then it stops. As long as there is that untouched point, it's not really pain. You mustn't look like that."
"Where does it stop?"
"Where I can think of nothing and feel nothing except that I designed that temple. I built it. Nothing else can seem very important."
"You shouldn't have built it. You shouldn't have delivered it to the sort of thing they're doing."
"That doesn't matter. Not even that they'll destroy it. Only that it had existed."
She shook her head. "Do you see what I was saving you from when I took commissions away from you? ... To give them no right to do this to you ... No right to live in a building of yours ... No right to touch you ... not in any way ... "
When Dominique walked into Toohey's office, he smiled, an eager smile of welcome, unexpectedly sincere. He forgot to control it while his eyebrows moved into a frown of disappointment; the frown and the smile remained ludicrously together for a moment. He was disappointed, because it was not her usual dramatic entrance; he saw no anger, no mockery; she entered like a bookkeeper on a business errand. She asked:
"What do you intend to accomplish by it?"
He tried to recapture the exhilaration of their usual feud. He
"Sit down, my dear. I'm delighted to see you. Quite frankly and helplessly delighted. It really took you too long. I expected you here much sooner. I've had so many compliments on that little article of mine, but, honestly, it was no fun at all, I wanted to hear what you'd say."
"What do you intend to accomplish by it?"
"Look, darling, I do hope you didn't mind what I said about that uplifting statue of yours. I thought you d understand I just couldn't pass up that one."
"What is the purpose of that lawsuit?"
"Oh well, you want to make me talk. And I did so want to hear you. But half a pleasure is better than none. I want to talk. I've waited for you so impatiently. But I do wish you'd sit down, I'll be more comfortable ... No? Well, as you prefer, so long as you don't run away. The lawsuit? Well, isn't it obvious?"