Wynand turned to Dominique.
"Do you remember our conversation about a certain quest, Mrs. Keating? I said it was a quest at which you would never succeed. Look at your husband. He's an expert — without effort. That is the way to go about it. Match that, sometime. Don't bother to tell me that you can't. I know it. You're an amateur, my dear."
Keating thought that he must speak again, but he couldn't, not as long as that salad was there before him. The terror came from that plate, not from the fastidious monster across the table; the rest of the room was warm and safe. He lurched forward and his elbow swept the plate off the table.
He made a kind of sound expressing regrets. Somebody's shape came up, there were polite voices of apology, and the mess vanished from the carpet.
Keating heard a voice saying: "Why are you doing this?" saw two faces turned to him and knew that he had said it.
"Mr. Wynand is not doing it to torture you, Peter," said Dominique calmly. "He's doing it for me. To see how much I can take."
"That's true, Mrs. Keating," said Wynand. "Partly true. The other part is: to justify myself."
"In whose eyes?"
"Yours. And my own, perhaps."
"Do you need to?"
"Sometimes. The Banner is a contemptible paper, isn't it? Well, I have paid with my honor for the privilege of holding a position where I can amuse myself by observing how honor operates in other men."
His own clothes, thought Keating, contained nothing now, because the two faces did not notice him any longer. He was safe; his place at that table was empty. He wondered, from a great, indifferent distance, why the two were looking at each other quietly, not like enemies, not like fellow executioners, but like comrades.
Two days before they were to sail, Wynand telephoned Dominique late in the evening.
"Could you come over right now?" he asked, and hearing a moment's silence, added: "Oh, not what you're thinking. I live up to my agreements. You'll be quite safe. I just would like to see you tonight."
"All right," she said, and was astonished to hear a quiet: "Thank you."
When the elevator door slid open in the private lobby of his penthouse, he was waiting there, but did not let her step out. He joined her in the elevator.
"I don't want you to enter my house," he said. "We're going to the floor below."
The elevator operator looked at him, amazed.
The car stopped and opened before a locked door. Wynand unlocked it and let her step out first, following her into the art gallery. She remembered that this was the place no outsider ever entered. She said nothing. He offered no explanation.
Four hours she walked silently through the vast rooms, looking at the incredible treasures of beauty. There was a deep carpet and no sound of steps, no sounds from the city outside, no windows. He followed her, stopping when she stopped. His eyes went with hers from object to object. At times his glance moved to her face. She passed, without stopping, by the statue from the Stoddard Temple.
He did not urge her to stay nor to hurry, as if he had turned the place over to her. She decided when she wished to leave, and he followed her to the door. Then she asked:
"Why did you want me to see this? It won't make me think better of you. Worse, perhaps."
"Yes, I'd expect that," he said quietly, "if I had thought of it that way. But I didn't. I just wanted you to see it."
4.
THE SUN had set when they stepped out of the car. In the spread of sky and sea, a green sky over a sheet of mercury, tracings of fire remained at the edges of the clouds and in the brass fittings of the yacht. The yacht was like a white streak of motion, a sensitive body strained against the curb of stillness.
Dominique looked at the gold letters — I Do — on the delicate white bow.
"What does that name mean?" she asked.
"It's an answer," said Wynand, "to people long since dead. Though perhaps they are the only immortal ones. You see, the sentence I heard most often in my childhood was 'You don't run things around here.'"
She remembered hearing that he had never answered this question before. He had answered her at once; he had not seemed conscious of making an exception. She felt a sense of calm in his manner, strange and new to him, an air of quiet finality.
When they went aboard, the yacht started moving, almost as if Wynand's steps on deck had served as contact. He stood at the rail, not touching her, he looked at the long, brown shore that rose and fell against the sky, moving away from them. Then he turned to her. She saw no new recognition in his eyes, no beginning, but only the continuation of a glance — as if he had been looking at her all the time.
When they went below he walked with her into her cabin. He said: "Please let me know if there's anything you wish," and walked out through an inside door. She saw that it led to his bedroom. He closed the door and did not return.
She moved idly across the cabin. A smear of reflection followed her on the lustrous surfaces of the pale satinwood paneling. She stretched out in a low armchair, her ankles crossed, her arms thrown behind her head, and watched the porthole turning from green to a dark blue. She moved her hand, switched on a light; the blue vanished and became a glazed black circle.
The steward announced dinner. Wynand knocked at her door and accompanied her to the dining salon. His manner puzzled her: it was gay, but the sense of calm in the gaiety suggested a peculiar earnestness.
She asked, when they were seated at the table:
"Why did you leave me alone?"
"I thought you might want to be alone."
"To get used to the idea?"
"If you wish to put it that way."
"I was used to it before I came to your office."
"Yes, of course. Forgive me for implying any weakness in you. I know better. By the way, you haven't asked me where we're going."
"That, too, would be weakness."
"True. I'm glad you don't care. Because I never have any definite destination. This ship is not for going to places, but for getting away from them. When I stop at a port, it's only for the sheer pleasure of leaving it. I always think: Here's one more spot that can't hold me."
"I used to travel a great deal. I always felt just like that. I've been told it's because I'm a hater of mankind."
"You're not foolish enough to believe that, are you?"
"I don't know."
"Surely you've seen through that particular stupidity. I mean the one that claims the pig is the symbol of love for humanity — the creature that accepts anything. As a matter of fact, the person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind. He expects nothing of men, so no form of depravity can outrage him."
"You mean the person who says that there's some good in the worst of us?"
"I mean the person who has the filthy insolence to claim that he loves equally the man who made that statue of you and the man who makes a Mickey Mouse balloon to sell on street corners. I mean the person who loves the men who prefer the Mickey Mouse to your statue — and there are many of that kind. I mean the person who loves Joan of Arc and the salesgirls in dress shops on Broadway — with an equal fervor. I mean the person who loves your beauty and the women he sees in a subway — the kind that can't cross their knees and show flesh hanging publicly over their garters — with the same sense of exaltation. I mean the person who loves the clean, steady, unfrightened eyes of man looking through a telescope and the white stare of an imbecile — equally, I mean quite a large, generous, magnanimous company. Is it you who hate mankind, Mrs. Keating?"
"You're saying all the things that — since I can remember — since I began to see and think — have been ... " She stopped.