She had never been here before, but she felt this place proclaiming its ownership of her, closing in about her with ominous intimacy. It was as if every dark mass exercised a suction like the pull of the planets in space, prescribing her orbit. She put her hand on a fire hydrant and felt the cold seeping through her glove into her skin. This was the way the town told her, a direct penetration which neither her clothes nor her mind could stop. The peace of the inevitable remained. Only now she had to act, but the actions were simple, set in advance. She asked a passer-by: "Where is the site of the new building of Janer's Department Store?"
She walked patiently through the dark streets. She walked past desolate winter lawns and sagging porches; past vacant lots where weeds rustled against tin cans; past closed grocery stores and a steaming laundry; past an uncurtained window where a man in shirt sleeves sat by a fire, reading a paper. She turned corners and crossed streets, with the feel of cobblestones under the thin soles of her pumps. Rare passersby looked, astonished, at her air of foreign elegance. She noticed it; she felt an answering wonder. She wanted to say: But don't you understand? — I belong here more than you do. She stopped, once in a while, closing her eyes; she found it difficult to breathe.
She came to Main Street and walked slower. There were a few lights, cars parked diagonally at the curb, a movie theater, a store window displaying pink underwear among kitchen utensils. She walked stiffly, looking ahead.
She saw a glare of light on the side of an old building, on a blind wall of yellow bricks showing the sooted floor lines of the neighboring structure that had been torn down. The light came from an excavation pit. She knew this was the site. She hoped it was not. If they worked late, he would be here. She did not want to see him tonight. She had wanted only to see the place and the building; she was not ready for more; she had wanted to see him tomorrow. But she could not stop now. She walked to the excavation. It lay on a corner, open to the street, without fence. She heard the grinding clatter of iron, she saw the arm of a derrick, the shadows of men on the slanting sides of fresh earth, yellow in the light. She could not see the planks that led up to the sidewalk, but she heard the sound of steps and then she saw Roark coming up to the street. He was hatless, he had a loose coat hanging open.
He stopped. He looked at her. She thought that she was standing straight; that it was simple and normal, she was seeing the gray eyes and the orange hair as she had always seen them. She was astonished that he moved toward her with a kind of urgent haste, that his hand closed over her elbow too firmly and he said: "You'd better sit down."
Then she saw she could not have stood up without that hand on her elbow. He took her suitcase. He led her across the dark side street and made her sit down on the steps of a vacant house. She leaned back against a closed door. He sat down beside her. He kept his hand tight on her elbow, not a caress, but an impersonal hold of control over both of them.
After a while he dropped his hand. She knew that she was safe now. She could speak.
"That's your new building?"
"Yes. You walked here from the station?"
"Yes."
"It's a long walk."
"I think it was."
She thought that they had not greeted each other and that it was right. This was not a reunion, but just one moment out of something that had never been interrupted. She thought how strange it would be if she ever said "Hello" to him; one did not greet oneself each morning.
"What time did you get up today?" she asked.
"At seven."
"I was in New York then. In a cab, going to Grand Central. Where did you have breakfast?"
"In a lunch wagon."
"The kind that stays open all night?"
"Yes. Mostly for truck drivers."
"Do you go there often?"
"Whenever I want a cup of coffee."
"And you sit at a counter? And there are people around, looking at you?"
"I sit at a counter when I have the time. There are people around. I don't think they look at me much."
"And afterward? You walk to work?"
"Yes."
"You walk every day? Down any of these streets? Past any window? So that if one just wanted to reach and open the window ... "
"People don't stare out of windows here."
From the vantage of the high stoop they could see the excavation across the street, the earth, the workmen, the rising steel columns in a glare of harsh light. She thought it was strange to see fresh earth in the midst of pavement and cobblestones; as if a piece had been torn from the clothing of a town, showing naked flesh. She said:
"You've done two country homes in the last two years."
"Yes. One in Pennsylvania and one near Boston."
"They were unimportant houses."
"Inexpensive, if that's what you mean. But very interesting to do."
"How long will you remain here?"
"Another month."
"Why do you work at night?"
"It's a rush job."
Across the street the derrick was moving, balancing a long girder in the air. She saw him watching it, and she knew he was not thinking of it, but there was the instinctive response in his eyes, something physically personal, intimacy with any action taken for his building.
"Roark ... "
They had not pronounced each other's names. It had the sensuous pleasure of a surrender long delayed — to pronounce the name and to have him hear it.
"Roark, it's the quarry again."
He smiled. "If you wish. Only it isn't."
"After the Enright House? After the Cord Building?"
"I don't think of it that way."
"How do you think of it?"
"I love doing it. Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable."
He was looking across the street. He had not changed. There was the old sense of lightness in him, of ease in motion, in action, in thought. She said, her sentence without beginning or end:
" ... doing five-story buildings for the rest of your life ... "
"If necessary. But I don't think it will be like that."
"What are you waiting for?"
"I'm not waiting."
She closed her eyes, but she could not hide her mouth; her mouth held bitterness, anger and pain.
"Roark, if you'd been in the city, I wouldn't have come to see you."
"I know it."
"But it was you — in another place — in some nameless hole of a place like this. I had to see it. I had to see the place."
"When are you going back?"
"You know I haven't come to remain?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"You're still afraid of lunch wagons and windows."
"I'm not going back to New York. Not at once."
"No?"
"You haven't asked me anything, Roark. Only whether I walked from the station."
"What do you want me to ask you?"
"I got off the train when I saw the name of the station," she said, her voice dull. "I didn't intend coming here. I was on my way to Reno."
"And after that?"
"I will marry again."
"Do I know your fiancé?"
"You've heard of him. His name is Gail Wynand."
She saw his eyes. She thought she should want to laugh; she had brought him at last to a shock she had never expected to achieve. But she did not laugh. He thought of Henry Cameron; of Cameron saying: I have no answer to give them, Howard. I'm leaving you to face them. You'll answer them. All of them, the Wynand papers and what makes the Wynand papers possible and what lies behind that.
"Roark."
He didn't answer.
"That's worse than Peter Keating, isn't it?" she asked.
"Much worse."
"Do you want to stop me?"
"No."