"The Banner Banner has the best reviewers." has the best reviewers."

"That's true. Of course. So there's nothing wrong in agreeing with them, is there?"

"Nothing whatever. I always agree."

"With whom?"

"With everybody."

"Are you making fun of me, Dominique?"

"Have you given me reason to?"

"No. I don't see how. No, of course I haven't."

"Then I'm not."

He waited. He heard a truck rumbling past, in the street below, and that filled a few seconds; but when the sound died, he had to speak again: "Dominique, I'd like to know what you think."

"Of what?"

"Of ... of ..." He searched for an important subject and ended with: "... of Vincent Knowlton."

"I think he's a man worth kissing the backside of."

"For Christ's sake, Dominique!"

"I'm sorry. That's bad English and bad manners. It's wrong, of course. Well, let's see: Vincent Knowlton is a man whom it's pleasant to know. Old families deserve a great deal of consideration, and we must have tolerance for the opinions of others, because tolerance is the greatest virtue, therefore it would be unfair to force your views on Vincent Knowlton, and if you just let him believe what he pleases, he will be glad to help you too, because he's a very human person."

"Now, that's sensible," said Keating; he felt at home in recognizable language. "I think tolerance is very important, because ..." He stopped. He finished, in an empty voice: "You said exactly the same thing as before."

"Did you notice that," she said. She said it without question mark, indifferently, as a simple fact. It was not sarcasm; he wished it were; sarcasm would have granted him a personal recognition-the desire to hurt him. But her voice had never carried any personal relation to him-not for twenty months.

He stared into the fire. That was what made a man happy-to sit looking dreamily into a fire, at his own hearth, in his own home; that's what he had always heard and read. He stared at the flames, unblinking, to force himself into a complete obedience to an established truth. Just one more minute of it and I will feel happy, he thought, concentrating. Nothing happened.

He thought of how convincingly he could describe this scene to friends and make them envy the fullness of his contentment. Why couldn't he convince himself? He had everything he'd ever wanted. He had wanted superiority-and for the last year he had been the undisputed leader of his profession. He had wanted fame-and he had five thick alb.u.ms of clippings. He had wanted wealth-and he had enough to insure luxury for the rest of his life. He had everything anyone ever wanted. How many people struggled and suffered to achieve what he had achieved? How many dreamed and bled and died for this, without reaching it? "Peter Keating is the luckiest fellow on earth." How often had he heard that?

This last year had been the best of his life. He had added the impossible to his possessions-Dominique Francon. It had been such a joy to laugh casually when friends repeated to him: "Peter, how did you ever do it?" It had been such a pleasure to introduce her to strangers, to say lightly: "My wife," and to watch the stupid, uncontrolled look of envy in their eyes. Once at a large party an elegant drunk had asked him, with a wink declaring unmistakable intentions: "Say, do you know that gorgeous creature over there?" "Slightly," Keating had answered, gratified, "she's my wife."

He often told himself gratefully that their marriage had turned out much better than he had expected. Dominique had become an ideal wife. She devoted herself completely to his interests: pleasing his clients, entertaining his friends, running his home. She changed nothing in his existence: not his hours, not his favorite menus, not even the arrangement of his furniture. She had brought nothing with her, except her clothes; she had not added a single book or ash tray to his house. When he expressed his views on any subject, she did not argue-she agreed with him. Graciously, as a matter of natural course, she took second place, vanishing in his background.

He had expected a torrent that would lift him and smash him against some unknown rocks. He had not found even a brook joining his peaceful river. It was more as if the river went on and someone came to swim quietly in his wake; no, not even to swim-that was a cutting, forceful action-but just to float behind him with the current. Had he been offered the power to determine Dominique's att.i.tude after their marriage, he would have asked that she behave exactly as she did.

Only their nights left him miserably unsatisfied. She submitted whenever he wanted her. But it was always as on their first night: an indifferent body in his arms, without revulsion, without answer. As far as he was concerned, she was still a virgin: he had never made her experience anything. Each time, burning with humiliation, he decided never to touch her again. But his desire returned, aroused by the constant presence of her beauty. He surrendered to it, when he could resist no longer; not often.

It was his mother who stated the thing he had not admitted to himself about his marriage. "I can't stand it," his mother said, six months after the wedding. "If she'd just get angry at me once, call me names, throw things at me, it would be all right. But I can't stand this." "What, Mother?" he asked, feeling a cold hint of panic. "It's no use, Peter," she answered. His mother, whose arguments, opinions, reproaches he had never been able to stop, would not say another word about his marriage. She took a small apartment of her own and moved out of his house. She came to visit him often and she was always polite to Dominique, with a strange, beaten air of resignation. He told himself that he should be glad to be free of his mother; but he was not glad.

Yet he could not grasp what Dominique had done to inspire that mounting dread within him. He could find no word or gesture for which to reproach her. But for twenty months it had been like tonight: he could not bear to remain alone with her-yet he did not want to escape her and she did not want to avoid him.

"n.o.body's coming tonight?" he asked tonelessly, turning away from the fire.

"No," she said, and smiled, the smile serving as connection to her next words: "Shall I leave you alone, Peter?"

"No!" It was almost a cry. I must not sound so desperate, he thought, while he was saying aloud: "Of course not. I'm glad to have an evening with my wife all to myself."

He felt a dim instinct telling him that he must solve this problem, must learn to make their moments together endurable, that he dare not run from it, for his own sake more than hers.

"What would you like to do tonight, Dominique?"

"Anything you wish."

"Want to go to a movie?"

"Do you?"

"Oh, I don't know. It kills time."

"All right. Let's kill time."

"No. Why should we? That sounds awful."

"Does it?"

"Why should we run from our own home? Let's stay here."

"Yes, Peter."

He waited. But the silence, he thought, is a flight too, a worse kind of flight.

"Want to play a hand of Russian Bank?" he asked.

"Do you like Russian Bank?"

"Oh, it kills ti-" He stopped. She smiled.

"Dominique," he said, looking at her, "you're so beautiful. You're always so ... so utterly beautiful. I always want to tell you how I feel about it."

"I'd like to hear how you feel about it, Peter."

"I love to look at you. I always think of what Gordon Prescott said. He said that you are G.o.d's perfect exercise in structural mathematics. And Vincent Knowlton said you're a spring morning. And Ellsworth-Ellsworth said you're a reproach to every other female shape on earth."

"And Ralston Holcombe?" she asked.

"Oh, never mind!" he snapped, and turned back to the fire.

I know why I can't stand the silence, he thought. It's because it makes no difference to her at all whether I speak or not; as if I didn't exist and never had existed ... the thing more inconceivable than one's death-never to have been born.... He felt a sudden, desperate desire which he could identify-a desire to be real to her.

"Dominique, do you know what I've been thinking?" he asked eagerly.

"No. What have you been thinking?"

"I've thought of it for some time-all by myself myself-I haven't mentioned it to anyone. And n.o.body suggested it. It's my own idea."

"Why, that's fine. What is it?"

"I think I'd like to move to the country and build a house of our own. Would you like that?"

"I'd like it very much. Just as much as you would. You want to design a home for yourself?"

"h.e.l.l, no. Bennett will dash one off for me. He does all our country homes. He's a whiz at it."

"Will you like commuting?"

"No, I think that will be quite an awful nuisance. But you know, everybody that's anybody commutes nowadays. I always feel like a d.a.m.n proletarian when I have to admit that I live in the city."

"Will you like to see trees and a garden and the earth around you?"

"Oh, that's a lot of nonsense. When will I have the time? A tree's a tree. When you've seen a newsreel of the woods in spring, you've seen it all."

"Will you like to do some gardening? People say it's very nice, working the soil yourself."

"Good G.o.d, no! What kind of grounds do you think we'd have? We can afford a gardener, and a good one-so the place will be something for the neighbors to admire."

"Will you like to take up some sport?"

"Yes, I'll like that."

"Which one?"

"I think I'll do better with my golf. You know, belonging to a country club right where you're one of the leading citizens in the community is different from occasional week ends. And the people you meet are different. Much higher cla.s.s. And the contacts you make ..." He caught himself, and added angrily: "Also, I'll take up horseback riding."

"I like horseback riding. Do you?"

"I've never had much time for it. Well, it does shake your insides unmercifully. But who the h.e.l.l is Gordon Prescott to think he's the only he-man on earth and plaster his photo in riding clothes right in his reception room?"

"I suppose you will want to find some privacy?"

"Well, I don't believe in that desert-island stuff. I think the house should stand in sight of a major highway, so people would point it out, you know, the Keating estate. Who the h.e.l.l is Claude Stengel to have a country home while I live in a rented flat? He started out about the same time I did, and look where he is and where I am, why, he's lucky if two and a half men ever heard of him, so why should he park himself in Westchester and ..."

And he stopped. She sat looking at him, her face serene.

"Oh G.o.d d.a.m.n it!" he cried. "If you don't want to move to the country, why don't you just say so?"

"I want very much to do anything you want, Peter. To follow any idea you get all by yourself."

He remained silent for a long time.

"What do we do tomorrow night?" he asked, before he could stop himself.

She rose, walked to a desk and picked up her calendar.

"We have the Palmers for dinner tomorrow night," she said.

"Oh, Christ!" he moaned. "They're such awful bores! Why do we have to have them?"

She stood holding the calendar forward between the tips of her fingers, as if she were a photograph with the focus on the calendar and her own figure blurred in its background.

"We have to have the Palmers," she said, "so that we can get the commission for their new store building. We have to get that commission so that we can entertain the Eddingtons for dinner on Sat.u.r.day. The Eddingtons have no commissions to give, but they're in the Social Register. The Palmers bore you and the Eddingtons snub you. But you have to flatter people whom you despise in order to impress other people who despise you."

"Why do you have to say things like that?"

"Would you like to look at this calendar, Peter?"

"Well, that's what everybody does. That's what everybody lives for."

"Yes, Peter. Almost everybody."

"If you don't approve, why don't you say so?"

"Have I said anything about not approving?"

He thought back carefully. "No," he admitted. "No, you haven't.... But it's the way you put things."

"Would you rather I put it in a more involved way-as I did about Vincent Knowlton?"

"I'd rather ..." Then he cried: "I'd rather you'd express an opinion, G.o.d d.a.m.n it, just once!"

She asked, in the same level monotone: "Whose opinion, Peter? Gordon Prescott's? Ralston Holcombe's? Ellsworth Toohey's?"

He turned to her, leaning on the arm of his chair, half rising, suddenly tense. The thing between them was beginning to take shape. He had a first hint of words that would name it.

"Dominique," he said, softly, reasonably, "that's it. Now I know. I know what's been the matter all the time."

"Has anything been the matter?"

"Wait. This is terribly important. Dominique, you've never said, not once, what you thought. Not about anything. You've never expressed a desire. Not of any kind."

"What's wrong about that?"

"But it's ... it's like death. You're not real. You're only a body. Look, Dominique, you don't know it, I'll try to explain. You understand what death is? When a body can't move any more, when it has no ... no will, no meaning. You understand? Nothing. The absolute nothing. Well, your body moves-but that's all. The other, the thing inside you, your-oh, don't misunderstand me, I'm not talking religion, but there's no other word for it, so I'll say: your soul-your soul doesn't exist. No will, no meaning. There's no real you you any more." any more."

"What's the real me?" she asked. For the first time, she looked attentive; not compa.s.sionate; but, at least, attentive.

"What's the real anyone?" he said, encouraged. "It's not just the body. It's ... it's the soul."

"What is the soul?"

"It's-you. The thing inside you."