The Fountainhead, 233-265

Roark gains commissions again and begins to make progress as an architect. He has his Enright House with a lot of publicity and allows him an opening to another commission with Joel Sutton, who ends with telling him that he wants him to build it, “just about almost, that is, I’ll give you a ring in a few days and we’ll have a dogfight over the contract!” (Rand, 260). He also runs into Dominique Francon again, and acts as though nothing has happened, “He knew that his absence bound her to him in a manner more complete and humiliating than his presence could enforce…she would be ready either to kill him or to come to him of her own free will. The two acts would be equal in her mind” (Rand, 252). They both seem to acknowledge this aspect in their thoughts in the book, but both refuse to speak of it to each other or to anyone else. They also help portray the mentality of Roark, by having Keating and Ellsworth discuss him briefly over tea where Keating mentions, “[Roark]’d walk over corpses. Any and all of them. All of us. But he’d be an architect” (Rand, 238), helping enforce the image that nothing and no one is more important to Roark than architecture.
Keating also progresses in this section to become closer friends with Ellsworth Toohey, and goes to meet Catherine and him over tea. He does and the day appears to be normal and routine, but in the thoughts of Keating, the beauty of what he and Catherine seems to be tainted by the presence of Ellsworth, despite his affection for him when Catherine is not around. He also builds a house for Lois Cook, who in a short passage sums up the conflict and closest thing to the source of distaste that society feels toward Roark, “They all work so hard and struggle and surer, trying to achieve beauty, trying to surpass one another in beauty. Let’s surpass them all! Let’s throw their sweat in their face. Let’s destroy them at one stroke. Let’s be gods. Let’s be ugly” (Rand, 241).
The only other key that seemed to be important was that, while Ellsworth seems to be like Keating and the conformers to society, he talks to Dominique and expresses that he understood what was unspoken between her and Roark, and that despite his ability to see the world the way they do, lives the way people like Keating do. “If you can see what you’re talking about, you can’t be what you are… Ellsworth, I think you’re a much worse person than I thought you were” (Rand, 264). It is interesting to see how his understanding of people like Roark but his attachment to people like Keating means, and I am interested to find that out.