GAIL WYNAND LOOKED AT THE SHINING WOOD OF THE YACHT DECK. The wood and a brass doorknob that had become a smear of fire gave him a sense of everything around him: the miles of space filled with sun, between the burning spreads of sky and ocean. It was February, and the yacht lay still, her engines idle, in the southern Pacific.

He leaned on the rail and looked down at Roark in the water. Roark floated on his back, his body stretched into a straight line, arms spread, eyes closed. The tan of his skin implied a month of days such as this. Wynand thought that this was the way he liked to apprehend space and time: through the power of his yacht, through the tan of Roark’s skin or the sunbrown of his own arms folded before him on the rail.

He had not sailed his yacht for several years. This time he had wanted Roark to be his only guest. Dominique was left behind.

Wynand had said: “You’re killing yourself, Howard. You’ve been going at a pace nobody can stand for long. Ever since Monadnock, isn’t it? Think you’d have the courage to perform the feat most difficult for you—to rest?”

He was astonished when Roark accepted without argument. Roark laughed:

“I’m not running away from my work, if that’s what surprises you. I know when to stop—and I can’t stop, unless it’s completely. I know I’ve overdone it. I’ve been wasting too much paper lately and doing awful stuff.”

“Do you ever do awful stuff?”

“Probably more of it than any other architect and with less excuse. The only distinction I can claim is that my botches end up in my own wastebasket.”

“I warn you, we’ll be away for months. If you begin to regret it and cry for your drafting table in a week, like all men who’ve never learned to loaf, I won’t take you back. I’m the worst kind of dictator aboard my yacht. You’ll have everything you can imagine, except paper or pencils. I won’t even leave you any freedom of speech. No mention of girders, plastics or reinforced concrete once you step on board. I’ll teach you to eat, sleep and exist like the most worthless millionaire.”

“I’d like to try that.”

The work in the office did not require Roark’s presence for the next few months. His current jobs were being completed. Two new commissions were not to be started until spring.

He had made all the sketches Keating needed for Cortlandt. The construction was about to begin. Before sailing, on a day in late December, Roark went to take a last look at the site of Cortlandt. An anonymous spectator in a group of the idle curious, he stood and watched the steam shovels biting the earth, breaking the way for future foundations. The East River was a broad band of sluggish black water; and beyond, in a sparse haze of snowflakes, the towers of the city stood