She did not say she was listening to his words and to the reason behind them. It was suddenly so clear to her that she heard it as an added clause to each sentence, even though he had no knowledge of what he was confessing.
"The worst thing about dishonest people is what they think of as honesty," he said. "I know a woman who's never held to one conviction for three days running, but when I told her she had no integrity, she got very tight-lipped and said her idea of integrity wasn't mine; it seems she'd never stolen any money. Well, she's one that's in no danger from me whatever. I don't hate her. I hate the impossible conception you love so passionately, Dominique."
"Do you?"
"I've had a lot of fun proving it."
She walked to him and sat down on the deck beside his chair, the planks smooth and hot under her bare legs. He wondered why she looked at him so gently. He frowned. She knew that some reflection of what she had understood remained in her eyes — and she looked away from him.
"Gail, why tell me all that? It's not what you want me to think of you."
"No. It isn't. Why tell you now? Want the truth? Because it has to be told. Because I want to be honest with you. Only with you and with myself. But I wouldn't have the courage to tell you anywhere else. Not at home. Not ashore. Only here — because here it doesn't seem quite real. Does it?"
"No."
"I think I hoped that here you'd accept it — and still think of me as you did when you spoke my name in that way I wanted to record."
She put her head against his chair, her face pressed to his knees, her hand dropped, fingers half-curled, on the glistening planks of the deck. She did not want to show what she had actually heard him saying about himself today.
On a night of late fall they stood together at the roof-garden parapet, looking at the city. The long shafts made of lighted windows were like streams breaking out of the black sky, flowing down in single drops to feed the great pool of fire below.
"There they are, Dominique — the great buildings. The skyscrapers. Do you remember? They were the first link between us. We're both in love with them, you and I."
She thought she should resent his right to say it. But she felt no resentment.
"Yes, Gail. I'm in love with them."
She looked at the vertical threads of light that were the Cord Building, she raised her fingers off the parapet, just enough to touch the place of its unseen form on the distant sky. She felt no reproach from it.
"I like to see a man standing at the foot of a skyscraper," he said. "It makes him no bigger than an ant — isn't that the correct bromide for the occasion? The God-damn fools! It's man who made it — the whole incredible mass of stone and steel. It doesn't dwarf him, it makes him greater than the structure. It reveals his true dimensions to the world. What we love about these buildings, Dominique, is the creative faculty, the heroic in man."
"Do you love the heroic in man, Gail?"
"I love to think of it. I don't believe it."
She leaned against the parapet and watched the green lights stretched in a long straight line far below. She said:
"I wish I could understand you."
"I thought I should be quite obvious. I've never hidden anything from you."
He watched the electric signs that flashed in disciplined spasms over the black river. Then he pointed to a blurred light, far to the south, a faint reflection of blue.
"That's the Banner Building. See, over there? — that blue light. I've done so many things, but I've missed one, the most important. There's no Wynand Building in New York. Some day I'll build a new home for the Banner. It will be the greatest structure of the city and it will bear my name. I started in a miserable dump, and the paper was called the Gazette. I was only a stooge for some very filthy people. But I thought, then, of the Wynand Building that would rise some day. I've thought of it all the years since."
"Why haven't you built it?"
"I wasn't ready for it."
"Why?"
"I'm not ready for it now. I don't know why. I know only that it's very important to me. It will be the final symbol. I'll know the right time when it comes."
He turned to look out to the west, to a path of dim scattered lights. He pointed:
"That's where I was born. Hell's Kitchen." She listened attentively; he seldom spoke of his beginning. "I was sixteen when I stood on a roof and looked at the city, like tonight. And decided what I would be."
The quality of his voice became a line underscoring the moment, saying: Take notice, this is important. Not looking at him, she thought this was what he had waited for, this should give her the answer, the key to him. Years ago, thinking of Gail Wynand, she had wondered how such a man faced his life and his work; she expected boasting and a hidden sense of shame, or impertinence flaunting its own guilt. She looked at him. His head lifted, his eyes level on the sky before him, he conveyed none of the things she had expected; he conveyed a quality incredible in this connection: a sense of gallantry.
She knew it was a key, but it made the puzzle greater. Yet something within her understood, knew the use of that key and made her speak.
"Gail, fire Ellsworth Toohey."
He turned to her, bewildered.
"Why?"
"Gail, listen." Her voice had an urgency she had never shown in speaking to him. "I've never wanted to stop Toohey. I've even helped him. I thought he was what the world deserved. I haven't tried to save anything from him ... or anyone. I never thought it would be the Banner — the Banner which he fits best — that I'd want to save from him."
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"Gail, when I married you, I didn't know I'd come to feel this kind of loyalty to you. It contradicts everything I've done, it contradicts so much more than I can tell you — it's a sort of catastrophe for me, a turning point — don't ask me why — it will take me years to understand — I know only that this is what I owe you. Fire Ellsworth Toohey. Get him out before it's too late. You've broken many much less vicious men and much less dangerous. Fire Toohey, go after him and don't rest until you've destroyed every last bit of him."
"Why? Why should you think of him just now?"
"Because I know what he's after."
"What is he after?"
"Control of the Wynand papers."
He laughed aloud; it was not derision or indignation; just pure gaiety greeting the point of a silly joke.
"Gail ... " she said helplessly.
"Oh for God's sake, Dominique! And here I've always respected your judgment."
"You've never understood Toohey."
"And I don't care to. Can you see me going after Ellsworth Toohey? A tank to eliminate a bedbug? Why should I fire Elsie? He's the kind that makes money for me. People love to read his twaddle. I don't fire good booby-traps like that. He's as valuable to me as a piece of flypaper."
"That's the danger. Part of it."
"His wonderful following? I've had bigger and better sob-sisters on my payroll. When a few of them had to be kicked out, that was the end of them. Their popularity stopped at the door of the Banner. But the Banner went on."
"It's not his popularity. It's the special nature of it. You can't fight him on his terms. You're only a tank — and that's a very clean, innocent weapon. An honest weapon that goes first, out in front, and mows everything down or takes every counterblow. He's a corrosive gas. The kind that eats lungs out. I think there really is a secret to the core of evil and he has it. I don't know what it is. I know how he uses it and what he's after."
"Control of the Wynand papers?"
"Control of the Wynand papers — as one of the means to an end."
"What end?"
"Control of the world."
He said with patient disgust: "What is this, Dominique? What sort of gag and what for?"
"I'm serious, Gail. I'm terribly serious."