Roark's eyes moved first and they moved to the drawing. He walked across the office, stopped before it and stood looking at it. Cameron's eyes followed him, a heavy glance, like a long, thin needle held fast at one end, describing a slow circle, its point piercing Roark's body, keeping it pinned firmly. Cameron looked at the orange hair, at the hand hanging by his side, its palm to the drawing, the fingers bent slightly, forgotten not in a gesture but in the overture to a gesture of asking or seizing something.
"Well?" said Cameron at last. "Did you come to see me or did you come to look at pictures?"
Roark turned to him.
"Both," said Roark.
He walked to the desk. People had always lost their sense of existence in Roark's presence; but Cameron felt suddenly that he had never been as real as in the awareness of the eyes now looking at him.
"What do you want?" snapped Cameron. "I should like to work for you," said Roark quietly. The voice said: "I should like to work for you." The tone of the voice said: "I'm going to work for you."
"Are you?" said Cameron, not realizing that he answered the unpronounced sentence. "What's the matter? None of the bigger and better fellows will have you?"
"I have not applied to anyone else."
"Why not? Do you think this is the easiest place to begin? Think anybody can walk in here without trouble? Do you know who I am?"
"Yes. That's why I'm here."
"Who sent you?"
"No one."
"Why the hell should you pick me?"
"I think you know that."
"What infernal impudence made you presume that I'd want you? Have you decided that I'm so hard up that I'd throw the gates open for any punk who'd do me the honor? 'Old Cameron,' you've said to yourself, 'is a has-been, a drunken ... " come on, you've said it! ... 'a drunken failure who can't be particular!' Is that it? ... Come on, answer me! Answer me, damn you! What are you staring at? Is that it? Go on! Deny it!"
"It's not necessary."
"Where have you worked before?"
"I'm just beginning."
"What have you done?"
"I've had three years at Stanton."
"Oh? The gentleman was too lazy to finish?"
"I have been expelled."
"Great!" Cameron slapped the desk with his fist and laughed. "Splendid! You're not good enough for the lice nest at Stanton, but you'll work for Henry Cameron! You've decided this is the place for refuse! What did they kick you out for? Drink? Women? What?"
"These," said Roark, and extended his drawings. Cameron looked at the first one, then at the next, then at every one of them to the bottom. Roark heard the paper rustling as Cameron slipped one sheet behind another. Then Cameron raised his head. "Sit down."
Roark obeyed. Cameron stared at him, his thick fingers drumming against the pile of drawings.
"So you think they're good?' said Cameron. "Well, they're awful. It's unspeakable. It's a crime. Look," he shoved a drawing at Roark's face, "look at that. What in Christ's name was your idea? What possessed you to indent that plan here? Did you just want to make it pretty, because you had to patch something together? Who do you think you are? Guy Francon, God help you? ... Look at this building, you fool! You get an idea like this and you don't know what to do with it! You stumble on a magnificent thing and you have to ruin it! Do you know how much you've got to learn?"
"Yes. That's why I'm here."
"And look at that one! I wish I'd done that at your age! But why did you have to botch it? Do you know what I'd do with that? Look, to hell with your stairways and to hell with your furnace room! When you lay the foundations ... "
He spoke furiously for a long time. He cursed. He did not find one sketch to satisfy him. But Roark noticed that he spoke as of buildings that were in construction.
He broke off abruptly, pushed the drawings aside, and put his fist over them. He asked:
"When did you decide to become an architect?"
"When I was ten years old."
"Men don't know what they want so early in life, if ever. You're lying."
"Am I?"
"Don't stare at me like that! Can't you look at something else? Why did you decide to be an architect?"
"I didn't know it then. But it's because I've never believed in God."
"Come on, talk sense."
"Because I love this earth. That's all I love. I don't like the shape of things on this earth. I want to change them."
"For whom?"
"For myself."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-two."
"When did you hear all that?"
"I didn't."
"Men don't talk like that at twenty-two. You're abnormal."
"Probably."
"I didn't mean it as a compliment."
"I didn't either."
"Got any family?"
"No."
"Worked through school?"
"Yes."
"At what?"
"In the building trades."
"How much money have you got left?"
"Seventeen dollars and thirty cents."
"When did you come to New York?"
"Yesterday."
Cameron looked at the white pile under his fist.
"God damn you," said Cameron softly.
"God damn you!" roared Cameron suddenly, leaning forward. "I didn't ask you to come here! I don't need any draftsmen! There's nothing here to draft! I don't have enough work to keep myself and my men out of the Bowery Mission! I don't want any fool visionaries starving around here! I don't want the responsibility. I didn't ask for it. I never thought I'd see it again. I'm through with it. I was through with that many years ago. I'm perfectly happy with the drooling dolts I've got here, who never had anything and never will have and it makes no difference what becomes of them. That's all I want Why did you have to come here? You're setting out to ruin yourself, you know that, don't you? And I'll help you to do it. I don't want to see you. I don't like you. I don't like your face. You look like an insufferable egotist. You're impertinent. You're too sure of yourself. Twenty years ago I'd have punched your face with the greatest of pleasure. You're coming to work here tomorrow at nine o'clock sharp."
"Yes," said Roark, rising.
"Fifteen dollars a week. That's all I can pay you."
"Yes."
"You're a damn fool. You should have gone to someone else. I'll kill you if you go to anyone else. What's your name?"
"Howard Roark."
"If you're late, I'll fire you."
"Yes."
Roark extended his hand for the drawings.
"Leave these here!" bellowed Cameron. "Now get out!"
4.
"TOOHEY," said Guy Francon, "Ellsworth Toohey. Pretty decent of him, don't you think? Read it, Peter."
Francon leaned jovially across his desk and handed to Keating the August issue of New Frontiers. New Frontiers had a white cover with a black emblem that combined a palette, a lyre, a hammer, a screw driver and a rising sun; it had a circulation of thirty thousand and a following that described itself as the intellectual vanguard of the country; no one had ever risen to challenge the description. Keating read from an article entitled "Marble and Mortar," by Ellsworth M. Toohey:
" ... And now we come to another notable achievement of the metropolitan skyline. We call the attention of the discriminating to the new Melton Building by Francon & Heyer. It stands in white serenity as an eloquent witness to the triumph of Classical purity and common sense. The discipline of an immortal tradition has served here as a cohesive factor in evolving a structure whose beauty can reach, simply and lucidly, the heart of every man in the street. There is no freak exhibitionism here, no perverted striving for novelty, no orgy of unbridled egotism. Guy Francon, its designer, has known how to subordinate himself to the mandatory canons which generations of craftsmen behind him have proved inviolate, and at the same time how to display his own creative originality, not in spite of, but precisely because of the Classical dogma he has accepted with the humility of a true artist. It may be worth mentioning, in passing, that dogmatic discipline is the only thing which makes true originality possible ...