As Roark enters the building housing The New York Banner, he reflects that Gail Wynand is the man whom he has come nearest to hating in his life. Wynand is both the symbol of the mindless conventionality that Henry Cameron saw as his primary enemy — and the husband of Dominique. Roark enters Wynand's office prepared to refuse any commission he is offered. Wynand, in turn, believes this interview will go exactly as all previous interviews with architects have gone: He merely has to speak to convey what he wants. The architect then nods in understanding, and the interview ends. But when Roark and Wynand meet face to face, neither of them is certain that there is not a moment when each stops in his normal course of movement. There is a moment when each forgets the immediate reality — when Wynand forgets the building he wishes to construct, and Roark is oblivious to the fact that this man is Dominique's husband — and focuses solely on the man he meets. There is one instant in which there is "only the total awareness, for each, of the man before him, only two thoughts meeting in the middle of the room — 'This is Gail Wynand' — 'This is Howard Roark.'"
Wynand intends to build a private home in Connecticut, and has purchased five hundred acres for that purpose. He has taken a long time to choose his architect. He has traveled around the country looking at buildings — at homes, at hotels, at office buildings. He never before heard of Roark. But then he saw Monadnock Valley, and recognized it as a masterpiece. After that, whenever he sees a building he likes, he asks who the architect is, and he always receives the same answer: Howard Roark. Wynand states that he wishes his home to have "the Roark quality," a sense of a joy that is so demanding and uplifting that it "makes one feel as if it were an achievement to experience it." Roark accepts the commission and Wynand explains his thinking regarding the home he wants.
Wynand desires a fortress in the country, so that he will not have to share Dominique with the people of the city. He tells Roark that he feels something much worse and much stronger than jealousy, that he cannot stand to see her on the streets of the city and must take her away from any contact with the shops, the streets, the taxicabs. He wants a fortress in which Dominique will be touched by neither the conventional lives of the men of the city nor the vulgar affairs of The Banner. He wants his home to be a vault to guard treasures too precious for the sight of men, but more, a world so beautiful that Dominique will not miss the one she's left. Wynand wants something sacred. He asks Roark if he's ever built a temple. He wants a temple built to Dominique Wynand — and he hires Roark to build it. He chooses Roark — even though he was away at the time of the Stoddard Temple and knows nothing about it — because what he sees in the Monadnock Valley Resort and in Roark's other buildings conveys a quality of the sublime akin to religion. He tells Roark that, when he finds an artist whose work he admires, he refuses to meet him, out of fear that the creator will not match his creation. When he meets Roark, however, Wynand realizes that this is one case in which an artist matches the greatness of his work. When Roark departs, Wynand has the paper's morgue send him all the material it has on Howard Roark and his career.
