IN DECEMBER the Cosmo-Slotnick Building was opened with great ceremony. There were celebrities, flower horseshoes, newsreel cameras, revolving searchlights and three hours of speeches, all alike.

I should be happy, Peter Keating told himself — and wasn't. He watched from a window the solid spread of faces filling Broadway from curb to curb. He tried to talk himself into joy. He felt nothing. He had to admit that he was bored. But he smiled and shook hands and let himself be photographed. The Cosmo-Slotnick Building rose ponderously over the street, like a big white bromide.

After the ceremonies Ellsworth Toohey took Keating away to the retreat of a pale-orchid booth in a quiet, expensive restaurant. Many brilliant parties were being given in honor of the opening, but Keating grasped Toohey's offer and declined all the other invitations. Toohey watched him as he seized his drink and slumped in his seat.

"Wasn't it grand?" said Toohey. 'That, Peter, is the climax of what you can expect from life." He lifted his glass delicately. "Here's to the hope that you shall have many triumphs such as this. Such as tonight."

"Thanks," said Keating, and reached for his glass hastily, without looking, and lifted it, to find it empty.

"Don't you feel proud, Peter?"

"Yes. Yes, of course."

"That's good. That's how I like to see you. You looked extremely handsome tonight. You'll be splendid in those newsreels."

A flicker of interest snapped in Keating's eyes. "Well, I sure hope so."

"It's too bad you're not married, Peter. A wife would have been most decorative tonight. Goes well with the public. With the movie audiences, too."

"Katie doesn't photograph well."

"Oh, that's right, you're engaged to Katie. So stupid of me. I keep forgetting it. No, Katie doesn't photograph well at all. Also, for the life of me, I can't imagine Katie being very effective at a social function. There are a great many nice adjectives one could use about Katie, but 'poised' and 'distinguished' are not among them. You must forgive me, Peter. I let my imagination run away with me. Dealing with art as much as I do, I'm inclined to see things purely from the viewpoint of artistic fitness. And looking at you tonight, I couldn't help thinking of the woman who would have made such a perfect picture by your side."

"Who?"

"Oh, don't pay attention to me. It's only an esthetic fancy. Life is never as perfect as that. People have too much to envy you for. You couldn't add that to your other achievements."

"Who?"

"Drop it, Peter. You can't get her. Nobody can get her. You're good, but you're not good enough for that."

"Who?"

"Dominique Francon, of course."

Keating sat up straight and Toohey saw wariness in his eyes, rebellion, actual hostility. Toohey held his glance calmly. It was Keating who gave in; he slumped again and he said, pleading:

"Oh, God, Ellsworth, I don't love her."

"I never thought you did. But I do keep forgetting the exaggerated importance which the average man attaches to love — sexual love."

"I'm not an average man," said Keating wearily; it was an automatic protest — without fire.

"Sit up, Peter. You don't look like a hero, slumped that way."

Keating jerked himself up — anxious and angry. He said:

"I've always felt that you wanted me to marry Dominique. Why? What's it to you?"

"You've answered your own question, Peter. What could it possibly be to me? But we were speaking of love. Sexual love, Peter, is a profoundly selfish emotion. And selfish emotions are not the ones that lead to happiness. Are they? Take tonight for instance. That was an evening to swell an egotist's heart. Were you happy, Peter? Don't bother, my dear, no answer is required. The point I wish to make is only that one must mistrust one's most personal impulses. What one desires is actually of so little importance! One can't expect to find happiness until one realizes this completely. Think of tonight for a moment. You, my dear Peter, were the least important person there. Which is as it should be. It is not the doer that counts but those for whom things are done. But you were not able to accept that — and so you didn't feel the great elation that should have been yours."

"That's true," whispered Keating. He would not have admitted it to anyone else.

"You missed the beautiful pride of utter selflessness. Only when you learn to deny your ego, completely, only when you learn to be amused by such piddling sentimentalities as your little sex urges — only then will you achieve the greatness which I have always expected of you."

"You ... you believe that about me, Ellsworth? You really do?"

"I wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't. But to come back to love. Personal love, Peter, is a great evil — as everything personal. And it always leads to misery. Don't you see why? Personal love is an act of discrimination, of preference. It is an act of injustice — to every human being on earth whom you rob of the affection arbitrarily granted to one. You must love all men equally. But you cannot achieve so noble an emotion if you don't kill your selfish little choices. They are vicious and futile — since they contradict the first cosmic law — the basic equality of all men."

"You mean," said Keating, suddenly interested, "that in a ... in a philosophical way, deep down, I mean, we're all equal? All of us?"

"Of course," said Toohey.

Keating wondered why the thought was so warmly pleasant to him. He did not mind that this made him the equal of every pickpocket in the crowd gathered to celebrate his building tonight; it occurred to him dimly — and left him undisturbed, even though it contradicted the passionate quest for superiority that had driven him all his life. The contradiction did not matter; he was not thinking of tonight nor of the crowd; he was thinking of a man who had not been there tonight.

"You know, Ellsworth," he said, leaning forward, happy in an uneasy kind of way, "I ... I'd rather talk to you than do anything else, anything at all. I had so many places to go tonight — and I'm so much happier just sitting here with you. Sometimes I wonder how I'd ever go on without you."

"That," said Toohey, "is as it should be. Or else what are friends for?"

That winter the annual costume Arts Ball was an event of greater brilliance and originality than usual. Athelstan Beasely, the leading spirit of its organization, had had what he called a stroke of genius: all the architects were invited to come dressed as their best buildings. It was a huge success.

Peter Keating was the star of the evening. He looked wonderful as the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. An exact papier-mâché replica of his famous structure covered him from head to knees; one could not see his face, but his bright eyes peered from behind the windows of the top floor, and the crowning pyramid of the roof rose over his head; the colonnade hit him somewhere about the diaphragm, and he wagged a finger through the portals of the great entrance door. His legs were free to move with his usual elegance, in faultless dress trousers and patent-leather pumps.

Guy Francon was very impressive as the Frink National Bank Building, although the structure looked a little squatter than in the original, in order to allow for Francon's stomach; the Hadrian torch over his head had a real electric bulb lit by a miniature battery. Ralston Holcombe was magnificent as a state capitol, and Gordon L. Prescott was very masculine as a grain elevator. Eugene Pettingill waddled about on his skinny, ancient legs, small and bent, an imposing Park Avenue hotel, with horn-rimmed spectacles peering from under the majestic tower. Two wits engaged in a duel, butting each other in the belly with famous spires, great landmarks of the city that greet the ships approaching from across the ocean. Everybody had lots of fun.