"Dominique, do you know what I've been thinking?" he asked eagerly.

"No. What have you been thinking?"

"I've thought of it for some time — all by myself — I haven't mentioned it to anyone. And nobody suggested it. It's my own idea."

"Why, that's fine. What is it?"

"I think I'd like to move to the country and build a house of our own. Would you like that?"

"I'd like it very much. Just as you would. You want to design a home for yourself?"

"Hell, no. Bennett will dash one off for me. He does all our country homes. He's a whiz at it."

"Will you like commuting?"

"No, I think that will be quite an awful nuisance. But you know, everybody that's anybody commutes nowadays. I always feel like a damn proletarian when I have to admit that I live in the city."

"Will you like to see trees and a garden and the earth around you?"

"Oh, that's a lot of nonsense. When will I have the time? A tree's a tree. When you've seen a newsreel of the woods in spring, you've seen it all."

"Will you like to do some gardening? People say it's very nice, working the soil yourself."

"Good God, no! What kind of grounds do you think we'd have? We can afford a gardener, and a good one — so the place will be something for the neighbors to admire."

"Will you like to take up some sport?"

"Yes, I'll like that."

"Which one?"

"I think I'll do better with my golf. You know, belonging to a country club right where you're one of the leading citizens in the community is different from occasional week ends. And the people you meet are different. Much higher class. And the contacts you make ... " He caught himself, and added angrily: "Also, I'll take up horseback riding."

"I like horseback riding. Do you?"

"I've never had much time for it. Well, it does shake your insides unmercifully. But who the hell is Gordon Prescott to think he's the only he-man on earth and plaster his photo in riding clothes right in his reception room?"

"I suppose you will want to find some privacy?"

"Well, I don't believe in that desert-island stuff. I think the house should stand in sight of a major highway, so people would point out, you know, the Keating estate. Who the hell is Claude Stengel to have a country home while I live in a rented flat? He started out about the same time I did, and look where he is and where I am, why, he's lucky if two and a half men ever heard of him, so why should he park himself in Westchester and ... "

And he stopped. She sat looking at him, her face serene.

"Oh God damn it!" he cried. "If you don't want to move to the country, why don't you just say so?"

"I want very much to do anything you want, Peter. To follow any idea you get all by yourself."

He remained silent for a long time.

"What do we do tomorrow night?" he asked, before he could stop himself.

She rose, walked to a desk and picked up her calendar.

"We have the Palmers for dinner tomorrow night," she said.

"Oh, Christ!" he moaned. "They're such awful bores! Why do we have to have them?"

She stood holding the calendar forward between the tips of her fingers, as if she were a photograph with the focus on the calendar and her own figure blurred in its background.

"We have to have the Palmers," she said, "so that we can get the commission for their new store building. We have to get that commission so that we can entertain the Eddingtons for dinner on Saturday. The Eddingtons have no commissions to give, but they're in the Social Register. The Palmers bore you and the Eddingtons snub you. But you have to flatter people whom you despise in order to impress other people who despise you."

"Why do you have to say things like that?"

"Would you like to look at this calendar, Peter?"

"Well, that's what everybody does. That's what everybody lives for."

"Yes, Peter. Almost everybody."

"If you don't approve, why don't you say so?"

"Have I said anything about not approving?"

He thought back carefully. "No," he admitted. "No, you haven't ... But it's the way you put things."

"Would you rather I put it in a more involved way — as I did about Vincent Knowlton?"

"I'd rather ... " Then he cried: "I'd rather you'd express an opinion, God damn it, just once!"

She asked, in the same level monotone: "Whose opinion, Peter? Gordon Prescott's? Ralston Holcombe's? Ellsworth Toohey's?"

He turned to her, leaning on the arm of his chair, half rising, suddenly tense. The thing between them was beginning to take shape. He had a first hint of words that would name it.

"Dominique," he said softly, reasonably, "that's it. Now I know. I know what's been the matter all the time."

"Has anything been the matter?"

"Wait. This is terribly important. Dominique, you've never said, not once, what you thought. Not about anything. You've never expressed a desire. Not of any kind."

"What's wrong about that?"

"But it's ... it's like death. You're not real. You're only a body. Look, Dominique, you don't know it, I'll try to explain. You understand what death is? When a body can't move any more, when it has no ... no will, no meaning. You understand? Nothing. The absolute nothing. Well, your body moves — but that's all. The other, the thing inside you, your — oh, don't misunderstand me, I'm not talking religion, but there's no other word for it, so I'll say: your soul — your soul doesn't exist. No will, no meaning. There's no real you any more."

"What's the real me?" she asked. For the first time, she looked attentive; not compassionate; but, at least, attentive.

"What's the real anyone?" he said, encouraged. "It's not just the body. It's ... it's the soul."

"What is the soul?"

"It's — you. The thing inside you."

"The thing that thinks and values and makes decisions?"

"Yes! Yes, that's it. And the thing that feels. You've — you've given it up."

"So there are two things that one can't give up: One's thoughts and one's desires?"

"Yes! Oh, you do understand! So you see, you're like a corpse to everybody around you. A kind of walking death. That's worse than any active crime. It's ... "

"Negation?"

"Yes. Just blank negation. You're not here. You've never been here. If you'd tell me that the curtains in this room are ghastly and if you'd rip them off and put up some you like — something of you would be real, here, in this room. But you never have. You've never told the cook what dessert you liked for dinner. You're not here, Dominique. You're not alive. Where's your I?"

"Where's yours, Peter?" she asked quietly.

He sat still, his eyes wide. She knew that his thoughts, in this moment, were clear and immediate like visual perception, that the act of thinking was an act of seeing a procession of years behind him.

"It's not true," he said at last, his voice hollow. "It's not true."

"What is not true?"

"What you said."

"I've said nothing. I asked you a question."

His eyes were begging her to speak, to deny. She rose, stood before him, and the taut erectness of her body was a sign of life, the life he had missed and begged for, a positive quality of purpose, but the quality of a judge.

"You're beginning to see, aren't you, Peter? Shall I make it clearer. You've never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn't want to show it. You wanted an act to help your act — a beautiful, complicated act, all twists, trimmings and words. All words. You didn't like what I said about Vincent Knowlton. You liked it when I said the same thing under cover of virtuous sentiments. You didn't want me to believe. You only wanted me to convince you that I believed. My real soul, Peter? It's real only when it's independent — you've discovered that, haven't you? It's real only when it chooses curtains and desserts — you're right about that — curtains, desserts and religions, Peter, and the shapes of buildings. But you've never wanted that. You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they're reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. Usually in the more vulgar kind of hotels. Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose. I gave you what you wanted. I became what you are, what your friends are, what most of humanity is so busy being — only with the trimmings. I didn't go around spouting book reviews to hide my emptiness of judgment — I said I had no judgment. I didn't borrow designs to hide my creative impotence — I created nothing. I didn't say that equality is a noble conception and unity the chief goal of mankind — I just agreed with everybody. You call it death, Peter? That kind of death — I've imposed it on you and on everyone around us. But you — you haven't done that. People are comfortable with you, they like you, they enjoy your presence. You've spared them the blank death. Because you've imposed it — on yourself."