On the stair landing outside Francon's closed door he stopped. He heard Francon's voice behind the door, loud, angry and helpless, the voice he always heard when Francon was beaten.

"... to expect such an outrage! From my own daughter! I'm used to anything from you, but this beats it all. What am I going to do? How am I going to explain? Do you have any kind of a vague idea of my position?"

Then Keating heard her laughing; it was a sound so gay and so cold that he knew it was best not to go in. He knew he did not want to go in, because he was afraid again, as he had been when he'd seen her eyes.

He turned and descended the stairs. When he had reached the floor below, he was thinking that he would meet her, that he would meet her soon and that Francon would not be able to prevent it now. He thought of it eagerly, laughing in relief at the picture of Francon's daughter as he had imagined her for years, revising his vision of his future; even though he felt dimly that it would be better if he never met her again.

X

RALSTON HOLCOMBE HAD NO VISIBLE NECK, BUT HIS CHIN TOOK care of that. His chin and jaws formed an unbroken arc, resting on his chest. His cheeks were pink, soft to the touch, with the irresilient softness of age, like the skin of a peach that has been scalded. His rich white hair rose over his forehead and fell to his shoulders in the sweep of a medieval mane. It left dandruff on the back of his collar.

He walked through the streets of New York, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, a dark business suit, a pale green satin shirt, a vest of white brocade, a huge black bow emerging from under his chin, and he carried a staff, not a cane, but a tall ebony staff surmounted by a bulb of solid gold. It was as if his huge body were resigned to the conventions of a prosaic civilization and to its drab garments, but the oval of his chest and stomach sallied forth, flying the colors of his inner soul.

These things were permitted to him, because he was a genius. He was also president of the Architects' Guild of America.

Ralston Holcombe did not subscribe to the views of his colleagues in the organization. He was not a grubbing builder nor a businessman. He was, he stated firmly, a man of ideals.

He denounced the deplorable state of American architecture and the unprincipled eclecticism of its pract.i.tioners. In any period of history, he declared, architects built in the spirit of their own time, and did not pick designs from the past; we could be true to history only in heeding her law, which demanded that we plant the roots of our art firmly in the reality of our own life. He decried the stupidity of erecting buildings that were Greek, Gothic or Romanesque; let us, he begged, be modern and build in the style that belongs to our days. He had found that style. It was Renaissance.

He stated his reasons clearly. Inasmuch, he pointed out, as nothing of great historical importance had happened in the world since the Renaissance, we should consider ourselves still living in that period; and all the outward forms of our existence should remain faithful to the examples of the great masters of the sixteenth century.

He had no patience with the few who spoke of a modern architecture in terms quite different from his own; he ignored them; he stated only that men who wanted to break with all all of the past were lazy ignoramuses, and that one could not put originality above Beauty. His voice trembled reverently on that last word. of the past were lazy ignoramuses, and that one could not put originality above Beauty. His voice trembled reverently on that last word.

He accepted nothing but stupendous commissions. He specialized in the eternal and the monumental. He built a great many memorials and capitols. He designed for International Expositions.

He built like a composer improvising under the spur of a mystic guidance. He had sudden inspirations. He would add an enormous dome to the flat roof of a finished structure, or encrust a long vault with gold-leaf mosaic, or rip off a facade of limestone to replace it with marble. His clients turned pale, stuttered-and paid. His imperial personality carried him to victory in any encounter with a client's thrift; behind him stood the stern, unspoken, overwhelming a.s.sertion that he was an Artist. Artist. His prestige was enormous. His prestige was enormous.

He came from a family listed in the Social Register. Social Register. In his middle years he had married a young lady whose family had not made the In his middle years he had married a young lady whose family had not made the Social Register, Social Register, but made piles of money instead, in a chewing-gum empire left to an only daughter. but made piles of money instead, in a chewing-gum empire left to an only daughter.

Ralston Holcombe was now sixty-five, to which he added a few years, for the sake of his friends' compliments on his wonderful physique; Mrs. Ralston Holcombe was forty-two, from which she deducted considerably.

Mrs. Ralston Holcombe maintained a salon that met informally every Sunday afternoon. "Everybody who is anybody in architecture drops in on us," she told her friends. "They'd better," she added.

On a Sunday afternoon in March, Keating drove to the Holcombe mansion-a reproduction of a Florentine palazzo palazzo-dutifully, but a little reluctantly. He had been a frequent guest at these celebrated gatherings and he was beginning to be bored, for he knew everybody he could expect to find there. He felt, however, that he had to attend this time, because the occasion was to be in honor of the completion of one more capitol by Ralston Holcombe in some state or another.

A substantial crowd was lost in the marble ballroom of the Holcombes, scattered in forlorn islets through an expanse intended for court receptions. The guests stood about, self-consciously informal, working at being brilliant. Steps rang against the marble with the echoing sound of a crypt. The flames of tall candles clashed desolately with the gray of the light from the street; the light made the candles seem dimmer, the candles gave to the day outside a premonitory tinge of dusk. A scale model of the new state capitol stood displayed on a pedestal in the middle of the room, ablaze with tiny electric bulbs.

Mrs. Ralston Holcombe presided over the tea table. Each guest accepted a fragile cup of transparent porcelain, took two delicate sips and vanished in the direction of the bar. Two stately butlers went about collecting the abandoned cups.

Mrs. Ralston Holcombe, as an enthusiastic girl friend had described her, was "pet.i.te, but intellectual." Her diminutive stature was her secret sorrow, but she had learned to find compensations. She could talk, and did, of wearing dresses size ten and of shopping in the junior departments. She wore high-school garments and short socks in summer, displaying spindly legs with hard blue veins. She adored celebrities. That was her mission in life. She hunted them grimly; she faced them with wide-eyed admiration and spoke of her own insignificance, of her humility before achievement; she shrugged, tight-lipped and rancorous, whenever one of them did not seem to take sufficient account of her own views on life after death, the theory of relativity, Aztec architecture, birth control and the movies. She had a great many poor friends and advertised the fact. If a friend happened to improve his financial position, she dropped him, feeling that he had committed an act of treason. She hated the wealthy in all sincerity: they shared her only badge of distinction. She considered architecture her private domain. She had been christened "Constance" and found it awfully clever to be known as "Kiki," a nickname she had forced on her friends when she was well past thirty.

Keating had never felt comfortable in Mrs. Holcombe's presence, because she smiled at him too insistently and commented on his remarks by winking and saying: "Why, Peter, how naughty of you!" when no such intention had been in his mind at all. He bowed over her hand, however, this afternoon as usual, and she smiled from behind the silver teapot. She wore a regal gown of emerald velvet, and a magenta ribbon in her bobbed hair with a cute little bow in front. Her skin was tanned and dry, with enlarged pores showing on her nostrils. She handed a cup to Keating, a square-cut emerald glittering on her finger in the candlelight.

Keating expressed his admiration for the capitol and escaped to examine the model. He stood before it for a correct number of minutes, scalding his lips with the hot liquid that smelled of cloves. Holcombe, who never looked in the direction of the model and never missed a guest stopping before it, slapped Keating's shoulder and said something appropriate about young fellows learning the beauty of the style of the Renaissance. Then Keating wandered off, shook a few hands without enthusiasm, and glanced at his wrist watch, calculating the time when it would be permissible to leave. Then he stopped.

Beyond a broad arch, in a small library, with three young men beside her, he saw Dominique Francon.

She stood leaning against a column, a c.o.c.ktail gla.s.s in her hand. She wore a suit of black velvet; the heavy cloth, which transmitted no light rays, held her anch.o.r.ed to reality by stopping the light that flowed too freely through the flesh of her hands, her neck, her face. A white spark of fire flashed like a cold metallic cross in the gla.s.s she held, as if it were a lens gathering the diffused radiance of her skin.

Keating tore forward and found Francon in the crowd.

"Well, Peter!" said Francon brightly. "Want me to get you a drink? Not so hot," he added, lowering his voice, "but the Manhattans aren't too bad."

"No," said Keating, "thanks."

"Entre nous," said Francon, winking at the model of the capital, "it's a holy mess, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Keating. "Miserable proportions.... That dome looks like Holcombe's face imitating a sunrise on the roof...." They had stopped in full view of the library and Keating's eyes were fixed on the girl in black, inviting Francon to notice it; he enjoyed having Francon in a trap.

"And the plan! The plan! Do you see that on the second floor ... oh," said Francon, noticing.

He looked at Keating, then at the library, then at Keating again.

"Well," said Francon at last, "don't blame me afterward. You've asked for it. Come on."

They entered the library together. Keating stopped, correctly, but allowing his eyes an improper intensity, while Francon beamed with unconvincing cheeriness: "Dominique, my dear! May I present?-this is Peter Keating, my own right hand. Peter-my daughter."

"How do you do," said Keating, his voice soft.

Dominique bowed gravely.

"I have waited to meet you for such a long time, Miss Francon."

"This will be interesting," said Dominique. "You will want to be nice to me, of course, and yet that won't be diplomatic."

"What do you mean, Miss Francon?"

"Father would prefer you to be horrible with me. Father and I don't get along at all."

"Why, Miss Francon, I ..."

"I think it's only fair to tell you this at the beginning. You may want to redraw some conclusions." He was looking for Francon, but Francon had vanished. "No," she said softly, "Father doesn't do these things well at all. He's too obvious. You asked him for the introduction, but he shouldn't have let me notice that. However, it's quite all right, since we both admit it. Sit down."

She slipped into a chair and he sat down obediently beside her. The young men whom he did not know stood about for a few minutes, trying to be included in the conversation by smiling blankly, then wandered off. Keating thought with relief that there was nothing frightening about her; there was only a disquieting contrast between her words and the candid innocence of the manner she used to utter them; he did not know which to trust.

"I admit I asked for the introduction," he said. "That's obvious anyway, isn't it? Who wouldn't ask for it? But don't you think that the conclusions I'll draw may have nothing to do with your father?"

"Don't say that I'm beautiful and exquisite and like no one you've ever met before and that you're very much afraid that you're going to fall in love with me. You'll say it eventually, but let's postpone it. Apart from that, I think we'll get along very nicely."

"But you're trying to make it very difficult for me, aren't you?"

"Yes. Father should have warned you."

"He did."

"You should have listened. Be very considerate of Father. I've met so many of his own right hands that I was beginning to be skeptical. But you're the first one who's lasted. And who looks like he's going to last. I've heard a great deal about you. My congratulations."

"I've been looking forward to meeting you for years. And I've been reading your column with so much ..." He stopped. He knew he shouldn't have mentioned that; and, above all, he shouldn't have stopped.

"So much ... ?" she asked gently.

"... so much pleasure," he finished, hoping that she would let it go at that.

"Oh, yes," she said. "The Ainsworth house. You designed it. I'm sorry. You just happened to be the victim of one of my rare attacks of honesty. I don't have them often. As you know, if you've read my stuff yesterday."

"I've read it. And-well, I'll follow your example and I'll be perfectly frank. Don't take it as a complaint-one must never complain against one's critics. But really that capitol of Holcombe's is much worse in all those very things that you blasted us for. Why did you give him such a glowing tribute yesterday? Or did you have to?"

"Don't flatter me. Of course I didn't have to. Do you think anyone on the paper pays enough attention to a column on home decoration to care what I say in it? Besides, I'm not even supposed to write about capitols. Only I'm getting tired of home decorations."

"Then why did you praise Holcombe?"

"Because that capitol of his is so awful that to pan it would have been an anticlimax. So I thought it would be amusing to praise it to the sky. It was."

"Is that the way you go about it?"

"That's the way I go about it. But no one reads my column, except housewives who can never afford to decorate their homes, so it doesn't matter at all."

"But what do you really like in architecture?"

"I don't like anything in architecture."

"Well, you know of course that I won't believe that. Why do you write if you have nothing you want to say?"

"To have something to do. Something more disgusting than many other things I could do. And more amusing."

"Come on, that's not a good reason."

"I never have any good reasons."

"But you must be enjoying your work."

"I am. Don't you see that I am?"

"You know, I've actually envied you. Working for a magnificent enterprise like the Wynand papers. The largest organization in the country, commanding the best writing talent and ..."

"Look," she said, leaning toward him confidentially, "let me help you. If you had just met Father, and he were working for the Wynand papers, that would be exactly the right thing to say. But not with me. That's what I'd expect you to say and I don't like to hear what I expect. It would be much more interesting if you said that the Wynand papers are a contemptible dump heap of yellow journalism and all their writers put together aren't worth two bits."

"Is that what you really think of them?"

"Not at all. But I don't like people who try to say only what they think I think."

"Thanks. I'll need your help. I've never met anyone ... oh, no, of course, that's what you didn't want me to say. But I really meant it about your papers. I've always admired Gail Wynand. I've always wished I could meet him. What is he like?"

"Just what Austen h.e.l.ler called him-an exquisite b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

He winced. He remembered where he had heard Austen h.e.l.ler say that. The memory of Catherine seemed heavy and vulgar in the presence of the thin white hand he saw hanging over the arm of the chair before him.

"But, I mean," he asked, "what's he like in person?"

"I don't know. I've never met him."

"You haven't?" haven't?"

"No."

"Oh, I've heard he's so interesting!"

"Undoubtedly. When I'm in a mood for something decadent I'll probably meet him."

"Do you know Toohey?"

"Oh," she said. He saw what he had seen in her eyes before, and he did not like the sweet gaiety of her voice. "Oh, Ellsworth Toohey. Of course I know him. He's wonderful. He's a man I always enjoy talking to. He's such a perfect blackguard."

"Why, Miss Francon! You're the first person who's ever ..."

"I'm not trying to shock you. I meant all of it. I admire him. He's so complete. You don't meet perfection often in this world one way or the other, do you? And he's just that. Sheer perfection in his own way. Everyone else is so unfinished, broken up into so many different pieces that don't fit together. But not Toohey. He's a monolith. Sometimes, when I feel bitter against the world, I find consolation in thinking that it's all right, that I'll be avenged, that the world will get what's coming to it-because there's Ellsworth Toohey."

"What do you want to be avenged for?"

She looked at him, her eyelids lifted for a moment, so that her eyes did not seem rectangular, but soft and clear.

"That was very clever of you," she said. "That was the first clever thing you've said."

"Why?"

"Because you knew what to pick out of all the rubbish I uttered. So I'll have to answer you. I'd like to be avenged for the fact that I have nothing to be avenged for. Now let's go on about Ellsworth Toohey."

"Well, I've always heard, from everybody, that he's a sort of saint, the one pure idealist, utterly incorruptible and ..."

"That's quite true. A plain grafter would be much safer. But Toohey is like a testing stone for people. You can learn about them by the way they take him."

"Why? What do you actually mean?"

She leaned back in her chair, and stretched her arms down to her knees, twisting her wrists, palms out, the fingers of her two hands entwined. She laughed easily.

"Nothing that one should make a subject of discussion at a tea party. Kiki's right. She hates the sight of me, but she's got to invite me once in a while. And I can't resist coming, because she's so obvious about not wanting me. You know, I told Ralston tonight what I really thought of his capitol, but he wouldn't believe me. He only beamed and said that I was a very nice little girl."

"Well, aren't you?"

"What?"