"But, Peter," she said calmly, serene and astonished. "But of course. We'll wait."
He smiled in approval and relief. But he closed his eyes.
"Of course, we'll wait," she said firmly. "I didn't know this and it's very important. There's really no reason to hurry at all."
"You're not afraid that Francon's daughter might get me?"
She laughed. "Oh, Peter! I know you too well."
"But if you'd rather ... "
"No, it's much better. You see, to tell you the truth, I thought this morning that it would be better if we waited, but I didn't want to say anything if you had made up your mind. Since you'd rather wait, I'd much rather too, because, you see, we got word this morning that Uncle's invited to repeat this same course of lectures at a terribly important university on the West Coast this summer. I felt horrible about leaving him flat, with the work unfinished. And then I thought also that perhaps we were being foolish, we're both so young. And Uncle Ellsworth laughed so much. You see, it's really wiser to wait a little."
"Yes. Well, that's fine. But, Katie, if you feel as you did last night ... "
"But I don't! I'm so ashamed of myself. I can't imagine what ever happened to me last night. I try to remember it and I can't understand. You know how it is, you feel so silly afterward. Everything's so clear and simple the next day. Did I say a lot of awful nonsense last night?"
"Well, forget it. You're a sensible little girl. We're both sensible. And we'll wait just a while, it won't be long."
"Yes, Peter."
He said suddenly, fiercely:
"Insist on it now, Katie."
And then he laughed stupidly, as if he had not been quite serious.
She smiled gaily in answer. "You see?" she said, spreading her hands out.
"Well ... " he muttered. "Well, all right, Katie. We'll wait. It's better, of course. I ... I'll run along then. I'll be late at the office." He felt he had to escape her room for the moment, for that day. "I'll give you a ring. Let's have dinner together tomorrow."
"Yes, Peter. That will be nice."
He went away, relieved and desolate, cursing himself for the dull, persistent feeling that told him he had missed a chance which would never return; that something was closing in on them both and they had surrendered. He cursed, because he could not say what it was that they should have fought. He hurried on to his office where he was being late for an appointment with Mrs. Moorehead.
Catherine stood in the middle of the room, after he had left, and wondered why she suddenly felt empty and cold; why she hadn't known until this moment that she had hoped he would force her to follow him. Then she shrugged, and smiled reproachfully at herself, and went back to the work on her desk.
13.
ON A DAY in October, when the Heller house was nearing completion, a lanky young man in overalls stepped out of a small group that stood watching the house from the road and approached Roark.
"You the fellow who built the Booby Hatch?" he asked, quite diffidently.
"If you mean this house, yes," Roark answered.
"Oh, I beg your pardon, sir. It's only that that's what they call the place around here. It's not what I'd call it. You see, I've got a building job ... well, not exactly, but I'm going to build a filling station of my own about ten miles from here, down on the Post Road. I'd like to talk to you."
Later, on a bench in front of the garage where he worked, Jimmy Gowan explained in detail. He added: "And how I happened to think of you, Mr. Roark, is that I like it, that funny house of yours. Can't say why, but I like it. It makes sense to me. And then again I figured everybody's gaping at it and talking about it, well, that's no use to a house, but that'd be plenty smart for a business, let them giggle, but let them talk about it. So I thought I'd get you to build it, and then they'll all say I'm crazy, but do you care? I don't."
Jimmy Gowan had worked like a mule for fifteen years, saving money for a business of his own. People voiced indignant objections to his choice of architect; Jimmy uttered no word of explanation or self-defense; he said politely: "Maybe so, folks, maybe so," and proceeded to have Roark build his station.
The station opened on a day in late December. It stood on the edge of the Boston Post Road, two small structures of glass and concrete forming a semicircle among the trees: the cylinder of the office and the long, low oval of the diner, with the gasoline pumps as the colonnade of a forecourt between them. It was a study in circles; there were no angles and no straight lines; it looked like shapes caught in a flow, held still at the moment of being poured, at the precise moment when they formed a harmony that seemed too perfect to be intentional. It looked like a cluster of bubbles hanging low over the ground, not quite touching it, to be swept aside in an instant on a wind of speed; it looked gay, with the hard, bracing gaiety of efficiency, like a powerful airplane engine.
Roark stayed at the station on the day of its opening. He drank coffee in a clean, white mug, at the counter of the diner, and he watched the cars stopping at the door. He left late at night. He looked back once, driving down the long, empty road. The lights of the station winked, flowing away from him. There it stood, at the crossing of two roads, and cars would be streaming past it day and night, cars coming from cities in which there was no room for buildings such as this, going to cities in which there would be no buildings such as this. He turned his face to the road before him, and he kept his eyes off the mirror which still held, glittering softly, dots of light that moved away far behind him ...
He drove back to months of idleness. He sat in his office each morning, because he knew that he had to sit there, looking at a door that never opened, his fingers forgotten on a telephone that never rang. The ash trays he emptied each day, before leaving, contained nothing but the stubs of his own cigarettes.
"What are you doing about it, Howard?" Austen Heller asked him at dinner one evening.
"Nothing."
"But you must."
"There's nothing I can do."
"You must learn how to handle people."
"I can't."
"Why?"
"I don't know how. I was born without some one particular sense."
"It's something one acquires."
"I have no organ to acquire it with. I don't know whether it's something I lack, or something extra I have that stops me. Besides, I don't like people who have to be handled."
"But you can't sit still and do nothing now. You've got to go after commissions."
"What can I tell people in order to get commissions? I can only show my work. If they don't hear that, they won't hear anything I say. I'm nothing to them, but my work — my work is all we have in common. And I have no desire to tell them anything else."
"Then what are you going to do? You're not worried?"
"No. I expected it. I'm waiting."
"For what?"
"My kind of people."
"What kind is that?"
"I don't know. Yes, I do know, but I can't explain it. I've often wished I could. There must be some one principle to cover it, but I don't know what it is."
"Honesty?"
"Yes ... no, only partly. Guy Francon is an honest man, but it isn't that. Courage? Ralston Holcombe has courage, in his own manner ... I don't know. I'm not that vague on other things. But I can tell my kind of people by their faces. By something in their faces. There will be thousands passing by your house and by the gas station. If out of those thousands, one stops and sees it — that's all I need."