"You know, Howard, I admire your courage. Really, you know, I've had much more experience and I've got more of a standing in the profession, don't mind my saying it — I'm only speaking objectively — but I wouldn't dare take such a step."
"No, you wouldn't."
"So you've made the jump first. Well, well. Who would have thought it? ... I wish you all the luck in the world."
"Thank you, Peter."
"I know you'll succeed. I'm sure of it."
"Are you?"
"Of course! Of course, I am. Aren't you?"
"I haven't thought of it."
"You haven't thought of it?"
"Not much."
"Then you're not sure, Howard? You aren't?"
"Why do you ask that so eagerly?"
"What? Why ... no, not eagerly, but of course, I'm concerned, Howard, it's bad psychology not to be certain now, in your position. So you have doubts?"
"None at all."
"But you said ... "
"I'm quite sure of things, Peter."
"Have you thought about getting your registration?"
"I've applied for it."
"You've got no college degree, you know. They'll make it difficult for you at the examination."
"Probably."
"What are you going to do if you don't get the license?"
"I'll get it."
"Well, I guess I'll be seeing you now at the A.G.A., if you don't go high hat on me, because you'll be a full-fledged member and I'm only a junior."
"I'm not joining the A.G.A."
"What do you mean, you're not joining? You're eligible now."
"Possibly."
"You'll be invited to join."
"Tell them not to bother."
"What!"
"You know, Peter, we had a conversation just like this seven years ago, when you tried to talk me into joining your fraternity at Stanton. Don't start it again."
"You won't join the A.G.A. when you have a chance to?"
"I won't join anything, Peter, at any time."
"But don't you realize how it helps?"
"In what?"
"In being an architect."
"I don't like to be helped in being an architect."
"You're just making things harder for yourself."
"I am."
"And it will be plenty hard, you know."
"I know."
"You'll make enemies of them if you refuse such an invitation."
"I'll make enemies of them anyway."
The first person to whom Roark had told the news was Henry Cameron. Roark went to New Jersey the day after he signed the contract with Heller. It had rained and he found Cameron in the garden, shuffling slowly down the damp paths, leaning heavily on a cane. In the past winter, Cameron had improved enough to walk a few hours each day. He walked with effort, his body bent.
He looked at the first shoots of green on the earth under his feet. He lifted his cane, once in a while, bracing his legs to stand firm for a moment; with the tip of the cane, he touched a folded green cup and watched it spill a glistening drop in the twilight. He saw Roark coming up the hill, and frowned. He had seen Roark only a week ago, and because these visits meant too much to both of them, neither wished the occasion to be too frequent.
"Well?" Cameron asked gruffly. "What do you want here again?"
"I have something to tell you."
"It can wait."
"I don't think so."
"Well?"
"I'm opening my own office. I've just signed for my first building."
Cameron rotated his cane, the tip pressed into the earth, the shaft describing a wide circle, his two hands bearing down on the handle, the palm of one on the back of the other. His head nodded slowly, in rhythm with the motion, for a long time, his eyes closed. Then he looked at Roark and said:
"Well, don't brag about it."
He added: "Help me to sit down." It was the first time Cameron had ever pronounced this sentence; his sister and Roark had long since learned that the one outrage forbidden in his presence was any intention of helping him to move.
Roark took his elbow and led him to a bench. Cameron asked harshly, staring ahead at the sunset:
"What? For whom? How much?"
He listened silently to Roark's story. He looked for a long time at the sketch on cracked cardboard with the pencil lines over the watercolor. Then he asked many questions about the stone, the steel, the roads, the contractors, the costs. He offered no congratulations. He made no comment.
Only when Roark was leaving, Cameron said suddenly:
"Howard, when you open your office, take snapshots of it — and show them to me."
Then he shook his head, looked away guiltily, and swore.
"I'm being senile. Forget it."
Roark said nothing.
Three days later he came back. "You're getting to be a nuisance," said Cameron. Roark handed him an envelope, without a word. Cameron looked at the snapshots, at the one of the broad, bare office, of the wide window, of the entrance door. He dropped the others, and held the one of the entrance door for a long time.
"Well," he said at last, "I did live to see it."
He dropped the snapshot.
"Not quite exactly," he added. "Not in the way I had wanted to, but I did. It's like the shadows some say we'll see of the earth in that other world. Maybe that's how I'll see the rest of it. I'm learning."
He picked up the snapshot.
"Howard," he said. "Look at it."
He held it between them.
"It doesn't say much. Only 'Howard Roark, Architect.' But it's like those mottoes men carved over the entrance of a castle and died for. It's a challenge in the face of something so vast and so dark, that all the pain on earth — and do you know how much suffering there is on earth? — all the pain comes from that thing you are going to face. I don't know what it is, I don't know why it should be unleashed against you. I know only that it will be. And I know that if you carry these words through to the end, it will be a victory, Howard, not just for you, but for something that should win, that moves the world — and never wins acknowledgment. It will vindicate so many who have fallen before you, who have suffered as you will suffer. May God bless you — or whoever it is that is alone to see the best, the highest possible to human hearts. You're on your way into hell, Howard."
Roark walked up the path to the top of the cliff where the steel hulk of the Heller house rose into a blue sky. The skeleton was up and the concrete was being poured; the great mats of the terraces hung over the silver sheet of water quivering far below; plumbers and electricians had started laying their conduits.
He looked at the squares of sky delimited by the slender lines of girders and columns, the empty cubes of space he had torn out of the sky. His hands moved involuntarily, filling in the planes of walls to come, enfolding the future rooms. A stone clattered from under his feet and went bouncing down the hill, resonant drops of sound rolling in the sunny clarity of the summer air.
He stood on the summit, his legs planted wide apart, leaning back against space. He looked at the materials before him, the knobs of rivets in steel, the sparks in blocks of stone, the weaving spirals in fresh, yellow planks.
Then he saw a husky figure enmeshed in electric wires, a bulldog face spreading into a huge grin and china-blue eyes gloating in a kind of unholy triumph.
"Mike!" he said incredulously.
Mike had left for a big job in Philadelphia months ago, long before the appearance of Heller in Snyte's office, and Mike had never heard the news — or so he supposed.
"Hello, Red," said Mike, much too casually, and added: "Hello, boss."
"Mike, how did you ... ?"
"You're a hell of an architect. Neglecting the job like that. It's my third day here, waiting for you to show up."