Sally Brent decided to do a story on Mrs. Gail Wynand. It was just her type of story and there it was, simply going to waste. She gained admittance to Wynand's penthouse, using the tactics of gaining admittance to places where one is not wanted which she had been taught as a well-trained Wynand employee. She made her usual dramatic entrance, wearing a black dress with a fresh sunflower on her shoulder — her constant ornament that had become a personal trade-mark — and she said to Dominique breathlessly: "Mrs. Wynand, I've come here to help you deceive your husband!"
Then she winked at her own naughtiness and explained: "Our dear Mr. Wynand has been unfair to you, my dear, depriving you of your rightful fame, for some reason which I just simply can't understand. But we'll fix him, you and I. What can a man do when we girls get together? He simply doesn't know what good copy you are. So just give me your story, and I'll write it, and it will be so good that he just simply won't be able not to run it."
Dominique was alone at home, and she smiled in a manner which Sally Brent had never seen before, so the right adjectives did not occur to Sally's usually observant mind. Dominique gave her the story. She gave the exact kind of story Sally had dreamed about.
"Yes, of course I cook his breakfast," said Dominique. "Ham and eggs is his favorite dish, just plain ham and eggs ... Oh yes, Miss Brent, I'm very happy. I open my eyes in the morning and I say to myself, it can't be true, it's not poor little me who's become the wife of the great Gail Wynand who had all the glamorous beauties of the world to choose from. You see, I've been in love with him for years. He was just a dream to me, a beautiful, impossible dream. And now it's like a dream come true ... Please, Miss Brent, take this message from me to the women of America: Patience is always rewarded and romance is just around the corner. I think it's a beautiful thought and perhaps it will help other girls as it has helped me ... Yes, all I want of life is to make Gail happy, to share his joys and sorrows, to be a good wife and mother."
Alvah Scarret read the story and liked it so much that he lost all caution. "Run it off, Alvah," Sally Brent urged him, "just have a proof run off and leave it on his desk. He'll okay it, see if he won't." That evening Sally Brent was fired. Her costly contract was bought off — it had three more years to run — and she was told never to enter the Banner Building again for any purpose whatsoever.
Scarret protested in panic: "Gail, you can't fire Sally! Not Sally!"
"When I can't fire anyone I wish on my paper, I'll close it and blow up the God-damn building," said Wynand calmly.
"But her public! We'll lose her public!"
"To hell with her public."
That night, at dinner, Wynand took from his pocket a crumpled wad of paper — the proof cut of the story — and threw it, without a word, at Dominique's face across the table. It hit her cheek and fell to the floor. She picked it up, unrolled it, saw what it was and laughed aloud.
Sally Brent wrote an article on Gail Wynand's love life. In a gay, intellectual manner, in the terms of sociological study, the article presented material such as no pulp magazine would have accepted. It was published in the New Frontiers.
Wynand bought Dominique a necklace designed at his special order. It was made of diamonds without visible settings, spaced wide apart in an irregular pattern, like a handful scattered accidentally, held together by platinum chains made under a microscope, barely noticeable. When he clasped it about her neck, it looked like drops of water fallen at random.
She stood before a mirror. She slipped her dressing gown off her shoulders and let the raindrops glitter on her skin. She said:
"That life story of the Bronx housewife who murdered her husband's young mistress is pretty sordid, Gail. But I think there's something dirtier — the curiosity of the people who like to read about it. And then there's something dirtier still — the people who pander to that curiosity. Actually, it was that housewife — she has piano legs and such a baggy neck in her pictures — who made this necklace possible. It's a beautiful necklace. I shall be proud to wear it."
He smiled; the sudden brightness of his eyes had an odd quality of courage.
"That's one way of looking at it," he said. "There's another. I like to think that I took the worst refuse of the human spirit — the mind of that housewife and the minds of the people who like to read about her — and I made of it this necklace on your shoulders. I like to think that I was an alchemist capable of performing so great a purification."
She saw no apology, no regret, no resentment as he looked at her. It was a strange glance; she had noticed it before; a glance of simple worship. And it made her realize that there is a stage of worship which makes the worshiper himself an object of reverence.
She was sitting before her mirror when he entered her dressing room on the following night. He bent down, he pressed his lips to the back of her neck — and he saw a square of paper attached to the corner of her mirror. It was the decoded copy of the cablegram that had ended her career on the Banner. FIRE THE BITCH. G W
He lifted his shoulders, to stand erect behind her. He asked:
"How did you get that?"
"Ellsworth Toohey gave it to me. I thought it was worth preserving. Of course, I didn't know it would ever become so appropriate."
He inclined his head gravely, acknowledging the authorship, and said nothing else.
She expected to find the cablegram gone next morning. But he had not touched it. She would not remove it. It remained on display on the corner of her mirror. When he held her in his arms, she often saw his eyes move to that square of paper. She could not tell what he thought.
In the spring, a publishers' convention took him away from New York for a week. It was their first separation. Dominique surprised him by coming to meet him at the airport when he returned. She was gay and gentle; her manner held a promise he had never expected, could not trust, and found himself trusting completely.
When he entered the drawing room of their penthouse and slumped down, half stretching on a couch, she knew that he wanted to lie still here, to feel the recaptured safety of his own world. She saw his eyes, open, delivered to her, without defense. She stood straight, ready. She said:
"You'd better dress, Gail. We're going to the theater tonight."
He lifted himself to a sitting posture. He smiled, the slanting ridges standing out on his forehead. She had a cold feeling of admiration for him: the control was perfect, all but these ridges. He said:
"Fine. Black tie or white?"
"White. I have tickets for No Skin Off Your Nose. They were very hard to get."
It was too much; it seemed too ludicrous to be part of this moment's contest between them. He broke down by laughing frankly, in helpless disgust.
"Good God, Dominique, not that one!"
"Why, Gail, it's the biggest hit in town. Your own critic, Jules Fougler" — he stopped laughing. He understood — "said it was the great play of our age. Ellsworth Toohey said it was the fresh voice of the coming new world. Alvah Scarret said it was not written in ink, but in the milk of human kindness. Sally Brent — before you fired her — said it made her laugh with a lump in her throat. Why, it's the godchild of the Banner. I thought you would certainly want to see it."
"Yes, of course," he said.
He got up and went to dress.
No Skin Off Your Nose had been running for many months. Ellsworth Toohey had mentioned regretfully in his column that the title of the play had had to be changed slightly — "as a concession to the stuffy prudery of the middle class which still controls our theater. It is a crying example of interference with the freedom of the artist. Now don't let's hear any more of that old twaddle about ours being a free society. Originally, the title of this beautiful play was an authentic line drawn from the language of the people, with the brave, simple eloquence of folk expression."