ROARK KNEW THAT HE MUST NOT SHOW THE SHOCK OF HIS FIRST glance at Peter Keating—and that it was too late: he saw a faint smile on Keating’s lips, terrible in its resigned acknowledgment of disintegration.

“Are you only two years younger than I am, Howard?” was the first thing Keating asked, looking at the face of the man he had not seen for six years.

“I don’t know, Peter, I think so. I’m thirty-seven.”

“I’m thirty-nine—that’s all.”

He moved to the chair in front of Roark’s desk, groping for it with his hand. He was blinded by the band of glass that made three walls of Roark’s office. He stared at the sky and the city. He had no feeling of height here, and the buildings seemed to lie under his toes, not a real city, but miniatures of famous landmarks, incongruously close and small; he felt he could bend and pick any one of them up in his hand. He saw the black dashes which were automobiles and they seemed to crawl, it took them so long to cover a block the size of his finger. He saw the stone and plaster of the city as a substance that had soaked light and was throwing it back, row upon row of flat, vertical planes grilled with dots of windows, each plane a reflector, rose-colored, gold and purple—and jagged streaks of smoke-blue running among them, giving them shape, angles and distance. Light streamed from the buildings into the sky and made of the clear summer blue a humble second thought, a spread of pale water over living fire. My God, thought Keating, who are the men that made all this?—and then remembered that he had been one of them.

He saw Roark’s figure for an instant, straight and gaunt against the angle of two glass panes behind the desk, then Roark sat down facing him.

Keating thought of men lost in the desert and of men perishing at sea, when, in the presence of the silent eternity of the sky, they have to speak the truth. And now he had to speak the truth, because he was in the presence of the earth’s greatest city.

“Howard, is this the terrible thing they meant by turning the other cheek—your letting me come here?”

He did not think of his voice. He did not know that it had dignity.

Roark looked at him silently for a moment; this was a greater change than the swollen face.

“I don’t know, Peter. No, if they meant actual forgiveness. Had I been hurt, I’d never forgive it. Yes, if they meant what I’m doing. I don’t think a man can hurt another, not in any important way. Neither hurt him nor help him. I have really nothing to forgive you.”

“It would be better if you felt you had. It would be less cruel.”

“I suppose so.”

“You haven’t changed, Howard.”

“I guess not.”

“If this is the punishment I must take—I want you