"Someone else?"
"You know that I got it, from that first article of yours about the Enright House. You wanted me to get it. But don't you think someone else might understand your way of doing things?"
"Oh yes. But the effect — for you — will be worse than if they didn't. They'll like you the less for it. However, I don't know who'll even bother to understand. Unless it's ... Roark, what do you think of Ellsworth Toohey?"
"Good God, why should anyone think of Ellsworth Toohey?"
She liked the rare occasions when she met Roark at some gathering where Heller or Enright had brought him. She liked the polite, impersonal "Miss Francon" pronounced by his voice. She enjoyed the nervous concern of the hostess and her efforts not to let them come together. She knew that the people around them expected some explosion, some shocking sign of hostility which never came. She did not seek Roark out and she did not avoid him. They spoke to each other if they happened to be included in the same group, as they would have spoken to anyone else. It required no effort; it was real and right; it made everything right, even this gathering. She found a deep sense of fitness in the fact that here, among people, they should be strangers; strangers and enemies. She thought, these people can think of many things he and I are to each other — except what we are. It made the moments she remembered greater, the moments not touched by the sight of others, by the words of others, not even by their knowledge. She thought, it has no existence here, except in me and in him. She felt a sense of possession, such as she could feel nowhere else. She could never own him as she owned him in a room among strangers when she seldom looked in his direction. If she glanced at him across the room and saw him in conversation with blank, indifferent faces, she turned away, unconcerned; if the faces were hostile, she watched for a second, pleased; she was angry when she saw a smile, a sign of warmth or approval on a face turned to him. It was not jealousy; she did not care whether the face was a man's or a woman's; she resented the approval as an impertinence.
She was tortured by peculiar things: by the street where he lived, by the doorstep of his house, by the cars that turned the corner of his block. She resented the cars in particular; she wished she could make them drive on to the next street. She looked at the garbage pail by the stoop next door, and she wondered whether it had stood there when he passed by, on his way to his office this morning, whether he had looked at that crumpled cigarette package on top. Once, in the lobby of his house, she saw a man stepping out of the elevator; she was shocked for a second; she had always felt as if he were the only inhabitant of that house. When she rode up in the small, self-operating elevator, she stood leaning against the wall, her arms crossed over her breast, her hands hugging her shoulders, feeling huddled and intimate, as in a stall under a warm shower. She thought of that, while some gentleman was telling her about the latest show on Broadway, while Roark was sipping a cocktail at the other end of the room, while she heard the hostess whispering to somebody: "My Lord, I didn't think Gordon would bring Dominique — I know Austen will be furious at me, because of his friend Roark being here, you know."
Later, lying across his bed, her eyes closed, her cheeks flushed, her lips wet, losing the sense of the rules she herself had imposed, losing the sense of her words, she whispered: "Roark, there was a man talking to you out there today, and he was smiling at you, the fool, the terrible fool, last week he was looking at a pair of movie comedians and loving them, I wanted to tell that man: don't look at him, you'll have no right to want to look at anything else, don't like him, you'll have to hate the rest of the world, it's like that, you damn fool, one or the other, not together, not with the same eyes, don't look at him, don't like him, don't approve, that's what I wanted to tell him, not you and the rest of it, I can't bear to see that, I can't stand it, anything to take you away from it, from their world, from all of them, anything, Roark ... " She did not hear herself saying it, she did not see him smiling, she did not recognize the full understanding in his face, she saw only his face close over hers, and she had nothing to hide from him, nothing to keep unstated, everything was granted, answered, found.
Peter Keating was bewildered. Dominique's sudden devotion to his career seemed dazzling, flattering, enormously profitable; everybody told him so; but there were moments when he did not feel dazzled or flattered; he felt uneasy.
He tried to avoid Guy Francon. "How did you do it, Peter? How did you do it?" Francon would ask. "She must be crazy about you! Who'd every think that Dominique of all people would ... ? And who'd think she could? She'd have made me a millionaire if she'd done her stuff five years ago. But then, of course, a father is not the same inspiration as a ... " He caught an ominous look on Keating's face and changed the end of his sentence to: "as her man, shall we say?"
"Listen, Guy," Keating began, and stopped, sighing, and muttered: "Please, Guy, we mustn't ... "
"I know, I know, I know. We mustn't be premature. But hell, Peter, entre nous, isn't it all as public as an engagement? More so. And louder." Then the smile vanished, and Francon's face looked earnest, peaceful, frankly aged, in one of his rare flashes of genuine dignity. "And I'm glad, Peter," he said simply. "That's what I wanted to happen. I guess I always did love Dominique, after all. It makes me happy. I know I'll be leaving her in good hands. Her and everything else eventually ... "
"Look, old man, will you forgive me? I'm so terribly rushed — had two hours sleep last night, the Colton factory, you know, Jesus, what a job! — thanks to Dominique — it's a killer, but wait till you see it! Wait till you see the check, too!"
"Isn't she wonderful? Will you tell me, why is she doing it? I've asked her and I can't make head or tail of what she says, she gives me the craziest gibberish, you know how she talks."
"Oh well, we should worry, so long as she's doing it!"
He could not tell Francon that he had no answer; he couldn't admit that he had not seen Dominique alone for months; that she refused to see him.
He remembered his last private conversation with her — in the cab on their way from Toohey's meeting. He remembered the indifferent calm of her insults to him — the utter contempt of insults delivered without anger. He could have expected anything after that — except to see her turn into his champion, his press agent, almost — his pimp. That's what's wrong, he thought, that I can think of words like that when I think about it.
He had seen her often since she started on her unrequested campaign; he had been invited to her parties — and introduced to his future clients; he had never been allowed a moment alone with her. He had tried to thank her and to question her. But he could not force a conversation she did not want continued, with a curious mob of guests pressing all around them. So he went on smiling blandly — her hand resting casually on the black sleeve of his dinner jacket, her thigh against his as she stood beside him, her pose possessive and intimate, made flagrantly intimate by her air of not noticing it, while she told an admiring circle what she thought of the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. He heard envious comments from all his friends. He was, he thought bitterly, the only man in New York City who did not think that Dominique Francon was in love with him.
But he knew the dangerous instability of her whims, and this was too valuable a whim to disturb. He stayed away from her and sent her flowers; he rode along and tried not to think of it; the little edge remained — a thin edge of uneasiness.
One day, he met her by chance in a restaurant. He saw her lunching alone and grasped the opportunity. He walked straight to her table, determined to act like an old friend who remembered nothing but her incredible benevolence. After many bright comments on his luck, he asked: "Dominique, why have you been refusing to see me?"