WALKING THE SOIL OF A DESERT ISLAND HOLDS ONE ANCHORED to the rest of the earth; but in their penthouse, with the telephone disconnected, Wynand and Dominique had no feeling of the fifty-seven floors below them, of steel shafts braced against granite—and it seemed to them that their home was anchored in space, not an island, but a planet. The city became a friendly sight, an abstraction with which no possible communication could be established, like the sky, a spectacle to be admired, but of no direct concern in their lives.

For two weeks after their wedding they never left the penthouse. She could have pressed the button of the elevator and broken these weeks any time she wished; she did not wish it. She had no desire to resist, to wonder, to question. It was enchantment and peace.

He sat talking to her for hours when she wanted. He was content to sit silently, when she preferred, and look at her as he looked at the objects in his art gallery, with the same distant, undisturbing glance. He answered any question she put to him. He never asked questions. He never spoke of what he felt. When she wished to be alone, he did not call for her. One evening she sat reading in her room and saw him standing at the frozen parapet of the dark roof garden outside, not looking back at the house, only standing in the streak of light from her window.

When the two weeks ended, he went back to his work, to the office of the Banner. But the sense of isolation remained, like a theme declared and to be preserved through all their future days. He came home in the evening and the city ceased to exist. He had no desire to go anywhere. He invited no guests.

He never mentioned it, but she knew that he did not want her to step out of the house, neither with him nor alone. It was a quiet obsession which he did not expect to enforce. When he came home, he asked: “Have you been out?”—never: “Where have you been?” It was not jealousy—the “where” did not matter. When she wanted to buy a pair of shoes, he had three stores send a collection of shoes for her choice—it prevented her visit to a store. When she said she wanted to see a certain picture, he had a projection room built on the roof.

She obeyed, for the first few months. When she realized that she loved their isolation, she broke it at once. She made him accept invitations and she invited guests to their home. He complied without protest.

But he maintained a wall she could not break—the wall he had erected between his wife and his newspapers. Her name never appeared in their pages. He stopped every attempt to draw Mrs. Gail Wynand into public life—to head committees, sponsor charity drives, endorse crusades. He did not hesitate to open her mail—if it