Keating winced. He wondered when and how Toohey had had the time to notice that.
"Oh, well," said Toohey, "the exception proves the rule. Regrettable, however. I've always had the absurd idea that it would take a most unusual man to attract Dominique Francon. So of course I thought of you. Just an idle thought. Still, you know, the man who'll get her will have something you won't be able to match. He'll beat you there."
"No one's got her," snapped Keating.
"No, undoubtedly not. Not yet. That's rather astonishing. Oh, I suppose it will take an extraordinary kind of man."
"Look here, what in hell are you doing? You don't like Dominique Francon. Do you?"
"I never said I did."
A little later Keating heard Toohey saying solemnly in the midst of some earnest discussion: "Happiness? But that is so middle-class. What is happiness? There are so many things in life so much more important than happiness."
Keating made his way slowly toward Dominique. She stood leaning back, as if the air were a support solid enough for her thin, naked shoulder blades. Her evening gown was the color of glass. He had the feeling that he should be able to see the wall behind her, through her body. She seemed too fragile to exist; and that very fragility spoke of some frightening strength which held her anchored to existence with a body insufficient for reality.
When he approached, she made no effort to ignore him; she turned to him, she answered; but the monotonous precision of her answers stopped him, made him helpless, made him leave her in a few moments.
When Roark and Heller entered, Kiki Holcombe met them at the door. Heller presented Roark to her, and she spoke as she always did, her voice like a shrill rocket sweeping all opposition aside by sheer speed.
"Oh, Mr. Roark, I've been so eager to meet you! We've all heard so much about you! Now I must warn you that my husband doesn't approve of you — oh, purely on artistic grounds, you understand — but don't let that worry you, you have an ally in this household, an enthusiastic ally!"
"It's very kind, Mrs. Holcombe," said Roark. "And perhaps unnecessary."
"Oh, I adore your Enright House! Of course, I can't say that it represents my own esthetic convictions, but people of culture must keep their minds open to anything, I mean, to include any viewpoint in creative art, we must be broad-minded above all, don't you think so?"
"I don't know," said Roark. "I've never been broad-minded."
She was certain that he intended no insolence; it was not in his voice nor his manner; but insolence had been her first impression of him. He wore evening clothes and they looked well on his tall, thin figure, but somehow it seemed that he did not belong in them; the orange hair looked preposterous with formal dress; besides, she did not like his face; that face suited a work gang or an army, it had no place in her drawing room. She said:
"We've all been so interested in your work. Your first building?"
"My fifth."
"Oh, indeed? Of course. How interesting."
She clasped her hands, and turned to greet a new arrival. Heller said:
"Whom do you want to meet first? ... There's Dominique Francon looking at us. Come on."
Roark turned; he saw Dominique standing alone across the room. There was no expression on her face, not even an effort to avoid expression; it was strange to see a human face presenting a bone structure and an arrangement of muscles, but no meaning, a face as a simple anatomical feature, like a shoulder or an arm, not a mirror of sensate perception any longer. She looked at them as they approached. Her feet stood posed oddly, two small triangles pointed straight and parallel, as if there were no floor around her but the few square inches under her soles and she were safe so long as she did not move or look down. He felt a violent pleasure, because she seemed too fragile to stand the brutality of what he was doing; and because she stood it so well.
"Miss Francon, may I present Howard Roark?" said Heller.
He had not raised his voice to pronounce the name; he wondered why it had sounded so stressed; then he thought that the silence had caught the name and held it still; but there had been no silence: Roark's face was politely blank and Dominique was saying correctly:
"How do you do, Mr. Roark."
Roark bowed: "How do you do, Miss Francon."
She said: "The Enright House ... "
She said it as if she had not wanted to pronounce these three words; and as if they named, not a house, but many things beyond it.
Roark said: "Yes, Miss Francon."
Then she smiled, the correct, perfunctory smile with which one greets an introduction. She said:
"I know Roger Enright. He is almost a friend of the family."
"I haven't had the pleasure of meeting many friends of Mr. Enright."
"I remember once Father invited him to dinner. It was a miserable dinner. Father is called a brilliant conversationalist, but he couldn't bring a sound out of Mr. Enright. Roger just sat there. One must know Father to realize what a defeat it was for him."
"I have worked for your father" — her hand had been moving and it stopped in midair — "a few years ago, as a draftsman."
Her hand dropped. "Then you can see that Father couldn't possibly get along with Roger Enright."
"No. He couldn't."
"I think Roger almost liked me, though, but he's never forgiven me for working on a Wynand paper."
Standing between them, Heller thought that he had been mistaken; there was nothing strange in this meeting; in fact, there simply was nothing. He felt annoyed that Dominique did not speak of architecture, as one would have expected her to do; he concluded regretfully that she disliked this man, as she disliked most people she met.
Then Mrs. Gillespie caught hold of Heller and led him away. Roark and Dominique were left alone. Roark said:
"Mr. Enright reads every paper in town. They are all brought to his office — with the editorial pages cut out."
"He's always done that. Roger missed his real vocation. He should have been a scientist. He has such a love for facts and such contempt for commentaries."
"On the other hand, do you know Mr. Fleming?" he asked.
"No."
"He's a friend of Heller's. Mr. Fleming never reads anything but editorial pages. People like to hear him talk."
She watched him. He was looking straight at her, very politely, as any man would have looked, meeting her for the first time. She wished she could find some hint in his face, if only a hint of his old derisive smile; even mockery would be an acknowledgment and a tie; she found nothing. He spoke as a stranger. He allowed no reality but that of a man introduced to her in a drawing room, flawlessly obedient to every convention of deference. She faced this respectful formality, thinking that her dress had nothing to hide from him, that he had used her for a need more intimate than the use of the food he ate — while he stood now at a distance of a few feet from her, like a man who could not possibly permit himself to come closer. She thought that this was his form of mockery, after what he had not forgotten and would not acknowledge. She thought that he wanted her to be first to name it, he would bring her to the humiliation of accepting the past — by being first to utter the word recalling it to reality; because he knew that she could not leave it unrecalled.
"And what does Mr. Fleming do for a living?" she asked.
"He's a manufacturer of pencil sharpeners."
"Really? A friend of Austen's?"
"Austen knows many people. He says that's his business."
"Is he successful?"
"Who, Miss Francon? I'm not sure about Austen, but Mr. Fleming is very successful. He has branch factories in New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island."