Roark’s life is profoundly improved in another way, as well: his relationship with Dominique Francon. Dominique is intensely idealistic—she responds positively only to the sight of man’s noblest accomplishments. Her reverence for the Greek statuette, for Roark’s buildings, and for his character demonstrate her commitment to man at his highest and best. She can feel nothing, only indifference, for anything less. Dominique is a sincere hero-worshipper. She understands that the greatest men and women of history—Aristotle, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Marie Curie—represent the human potential; she knows that these are the individuals we must admire and emulate. Dominique will settle for nothing less. Howard Roark is that ideal, and Dominique recognizes it instantly. Though consciously wondering at the quarry whether Roark is a convict, Dominique responds to Roark at a deeper level. Reminiscent of Aristotle’s insight that “the eyes are the windows of the soul,” she recognizes that Roark’s “is the face of a god,” as she later explains to Kiki Holcolmbe. It is important to note, regarding Dominique, that, despite meeting Roark at the lowest point of his career, she knows from one glance at his face, his eyes, his posture, his movements, that there is some special and proud quality about this man. Later, she is not surprised to discover that he is the designer of the Enright House. She gives herself to Roark in the first moment of meeting and, at the deepest spiritual level, remains true to him for the rest of her life.
But for all her idealism, Dominique is also a pessimist. She believes that the rare individuals and works of integrity she worships have no chance; that the world is corrupt; that phonies like her father and Peter Keating achieve success and acclaim, whereas geniuses like Henry Cameron and Howard Roark end up either as drunken failures or laborers in granite quarries. This is why, for a long time, Dominique does not oppose, and even aids, Toohey—for she believes that his evil is all the world deserves. It is also why she destroys the priceless Greek statuette that she worships—because the world it suggests does not exist. More importantly, it explains why Dominique resists Roark physically at the quarry and why, later, she joins with Toohey in an attempt to wreck his career. In her view, Roark, the proud man of integrity, will be destroyed by a society that fears and envies his greatness. If she allows herself to love him, then her pain at his destruction will be unbearable. But, given her values, Dominique cannot help but love Roark. Therefore, his inevitable destruction must come from the hand of one who understands and loves him—hers—not from the hand of a society that rejects him. Her alliance with Toohey seeks a common goal—Roark’s destruction—but for opposite reasons. Toohey seeks spiritual murder, because Roark will not fit into the collectivist dictatorship Toohey hopes to establish; Dominique seeks mercy killing, so that the world cannot kill Roark slowly and agonizingly, as it did Cameron. Toohey looks to save his world from Roark; Dominique looks to save Roark from the world. They agree: Roark’s career must die.
Roark loves Dominique for a deeper reason than her beauty and elegance, for something even rarer than her brilliant mind: Her idealistic devotion to the nobility of man matches his own. Despite her pessimism, her alliance with Toohey, and her marriage to Keating, the value that her love adds to Roark’s life is incalculable. Roark now has a soul mate and lover who shares his deepest views of life and man. The depth of spiritual closeness they achieve is shown throughout the story, but one memorable scene stands out.
The Stoddard Temple is Dominique’s worst fear realized. Roark designs a masterpiece that the world, in its evil and its ignorance, destroys. Her suffering is far worse than his. She comes to his room on the evening that Stoddard announces his lawsuit. She says nothing, but Roark knows at a glance what she feels, and that she feels it for him. “‘You’re wrong,’ he said. They could always speak like this to each other, continuing a conversation they had not begun. His voice was gentle. ‘I don’t feel that.’” This dialogue between lovers illustrates that their intimacy is such that a wordless glance suffices to inform each of the other’s deepest thoughts and emotions. Roark knows that despite Dominique’s marriage to Keating, he will not lose her. They are bound to each other by deeper ties than a wedding vow.
Dominique marries Keating as an act of spiritual anesthesia. It is her idealism—her commitment to Roark and to all manifestations of human stature—that condemns her to suffering in a world that rejects her values. She seeks to kill off in herself (or at least put to sleep) her capacity to respond to sights of man’s greatness. Keating is an unprincipled man, utterly devoid of the noble values that Dominique treasures. By immersing herself in Keating’s life—by being a dutiful wife, by arranging his social calendar, by smiling at men of influence, by sleeping with him—she seeks to lose her attitude of man-worship. Dominique, a woman capable of loving only the equivalents of Michelangelo, in unbearable pain living in a world that repudiates such exalted standards, seeks to rid her spirit of its capacity for reverence by filling her life with the individual least deserving of it. But, as Nietzsche said, nobility of soul “is not to be lost.” Dominique’s quest is hopeless. Her reverence for man’s greatness is the essence of her soul; it is ineradicable. This is the deepest reason that Roark cannot lose her.
Another development in Part Two is the introduction of Steven Mallory’s character. When we meet him, Mallory is going a direction similar to that traveled by Henry Cameron. He is a brilliant young sculptor, whose work possesses “a magnificent respect for the human being.” Roark chooses him to do the sculpture for the Stoddard Temple because his figures “are the heroic in man.” But Mallory is tormented by the same evils that defeated Cameron and plague Dominique. His genius and originality are neither recognized nor valued. He is characteristically rejected by society in favor of sculptors who give the public works, not of man the hero but of trite conventionality. Mallory is already becoming bitter and cynical. He misses his appointment with Roark; he is drunk when Roark comes to his apartment; he is rude. But Roark recognizes him as an ally in his crusade. He encourages the boy; he shows him how much is possible; he hires him and, later, pays for his time so that Mallory can work as he wants. Most of all, by being the independent man he is, unconcerned with society’s rejection, Roark inspires Mallory. Mallory was on his way to cynical dissolution, because he thought that the innovators have no chance. Roark shows him, in action, that they do. Mallory, like Cameron, is, in effect, a part of Roark’s family. The elderly Cameron, Roark’s teacher, is a father figure; the youthful Mallory, whom Roark mentors, is like a younger brother. Mallory’s career will soon receive an upward boost from the same source as Roark’s—the patronage of Gail Wynand.
