"Why not go, just once?" said Heller. "It won't be too awful. It might even amuse you. You'll see a lot of your old friends there. John Erik Snyte, Peter Keating, Guy Francon and his daughter — you should meet his daughter. Have you ever read her stuff?"
"I'll go," said Roark abruptly.
"You're unpredictable enough even to be sensible at times. I'll call for you at eight-thirty Friday. Black tie. Do you own a tux, by the way?"
"Enright made me get one."
"Enright is a very sensible man."
When Heller left, Roark remained sitting on the table for a long time. He had decided to go to the party, because he knew that it would be the last of all places where Dominique could wish to meet him again.
"There is nothing as useless, my dear Kiki," said Ellsworth Toohey, "as a rich woman who makes herself a profession of entertaining. But then, all useless things have charm. Like aristocracy, for instance, the most useless conception of all."
Kiki Holcombe wrinkled her nose in a cute little pout of reproach, but she liked the comparison to aristocracy. Three crystal chandeliers blazed over her Florentine ballroom, and when she looked up at Toohey the lights stood reflected in her eyes, making them a moist collection of sparks between heavy, beaded lashes.
"You say disgusting things, Ellsworth. I don't know why I keep on inviting you."
"That is precisely why, my dear. I think I shall be invited here as often as I wish."
"What can a mere woman do against that?"
"Never start an argument with Mr. Toohey," said Mrs. Gillespie, a tall woman wearing a necklace of large diamonds, the size of the teeth she bared when she smiled. "It's no use. We're beaten in advance."
"Argument, Mrs. Gillespie," he said, "is one of the things that has neither use nor charm. Leave it to the men of brains. Brains, of course, are a dangerous confession of weakness. It has been said that men develop brains when they have failed in everything else."
"Now you don't mean that at all," said Mrs. Gillespie, while her smile accepted it as a pleasant truth. She took possession of him triumphantly and led him away as a prize stolen from Mrs. Holcombe who had turned aside for a moment to greet new guests. "But you men of intellect are such children. You're so sensitive. One must pamper you."
"I wouldn't do that, Mrs. Gillespie. We'll take advantage of it. And to display one's brain is so vulgar. It's even more vulgar than to display one's wealth."
"Oh dear, you would get that in, wouldn't you? Now of course I've heard that you're some sort of a radical, but I won't take it seriously. Not one bit. How do you like that?"
"I like it very much," said Toohey.
"You can't kid me. You can't make me think that you're one of the dangerous kind. The dangerous kind are all dirty and use bad grammar. And you have such a beautiful voice!"
"Whatever made you think that I aspired to be dangerous, Mrs. Gillespie? I'm merely — well, shall we say? that mildest of all things, a conscience. Your own conscience, conveniently personified in the body of another person and attending to your concern for the less fortunate of this world, thus leaving you free not to attend to."
"Well, what a quaint idea! I don't know whether it's horrible or very wise indeed."
"Both, Mrs. Gillespie. As all wisdom."
Kiki Holcombe surveyed her ballroom with satisfaction. She looked up at the twilight of the ceiling, left untouched above the chandeliers, and she noted how far it was above the guests, how dominant and undisturbed. The huge crowd of guests did not dwarf her hall; it stood over them like a square box of space, grotesquely out of scale; and it was this wasted expanse of air imprisoned above them that gave the occasion an aspect of regal luxury; it was like the lid of a jewel case, unnecessarily large over a flat bottom holding a single small gem.
The guests moved in two broad, changing currents that drew them all, sooner or later, toward two whirlpools; at the center of one stood Ellsworth Toohey, of the other — Peter Keating. Evening clothes were not becoming to Ellsworth Toohey; the rectangle of white shirt front prolonged his face, stretching him out into two dimensions; the wings of his tie made his thin neck look like that of a plucked chicken, pale, bluish and ready to be twisted by a single movement of some strong fist. But he wore his clothes better than any man present. He wore them with the careless impertinence of utter ease in the unbecoming, and the very grotesqueness of his appearance became a declaration of his superiority, a superiority great enough to warrant disregard of so much ungainliness.
He was saying to a somber young female who wore glasses and a low-cut evening gown: "My dear, you will never be more than a dilettante of the intellect, unless you submerge yourself in some cause greater than yourself."
He was saying to an obese gentlemen with a face turning purple in the heat of an argument: "But, my friend, I might not like it either. I merely said that such happens to be the inevitable course of history. And who are you or I to oppose the course of history?"
He was saying to an unhappy young architect: "No, my boy, what I have against you is not the bad building you designed, but the bad taste you exhibited in whining about my criticism of it. You should be careful. Someone might say that you can neither dish it out nor take it."
He was saying to a millionaire's widow: "Yes, I do think it would be a good idea if you made a contribution to the Workshop of Social Study. It would be a way of taking part in the great human stream of cultural achievement, without upsetting your routine or your digestion."
Those around him were saying: "Isn't he witty? And such courage!"
Peter Keating smiled radiantly. He felt the attention and admiration flowing toward him from every part of the ballroom. He looked at the people, all these trim, perfumed, silk-rustling people lacquered with light, dripping with light, as they had all been dripping with shower water a few hours ago, getting ready to come here and stand in homage before a man named Peter Keating. There were moments when he forgot that he was Peter Keating and he glanced at a mirror, at his own figure, he wanted to join in the general admiration for it.
Once the current left him face to face with Ellsworth Toohey. Keating smiled like a boy emerging from a stream on a summer day, glowing, invigorated, restless with energy. Toohey stood looking at him; Toohey's hands had slipped negligently into his trouser pockets, making his jacket flare out over his thin hips; he seemed to teeter faintly on his small feet; his eyes were attentive in enigmatic appraisal.
"Now this, Ellsworth ... this ... isn't it a wonderful evening?" said Keating, like a child to a mother who would understand, and a little like a drunk.
"Being happy, Peter? You're quite the sensation tonight. Little Peter seems to have crossed the line into a big celebrity. It happens like this, one can never tell exactly when or why ... There's someone here, though, who seems to be ignoring you quite flagrantly, doesn't she?"
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?"