In keeping with the wishes of both his mother and his boss, and despite his love for Katie, Peter proposes marriage to Dominique Francon. Dominique is beautiful, elegant, and haughty — everything Katie is not. A brilliant, free-spirited, outspoken woman, Dominique sees with her own eyes and understands with her own mind. She recognizes that Keating is a manipulative fraud and says so to his face. She responds to his proposal with the remark that if she ever wishes to punish herself for some terrible misdeed, she will marry Keating. Keating proposes for the same reason he becomes an architect in the first place — because Dominique's poise, grace, and beauty will impress others in a way that Katie never could.
Dominique writes a column, "Your House," for The New York Banner, devoted to architectural design and interior decorating. The Banner is a lowbrow, yellow-press tabloid, specializing in a combination of lurid and overly-sentimental stories aimed at those with the most vulgar tastes. The paper is owned by Gail Wynand, a brilliant man of consummate artistic judgment, but one who panders ceaselessly to the lowest tastes of the crowd in order to gain wealth and political influence. (This ambivalent quality in Wynand's character has great impact on later events of the story.) Henry Cameron, on his deathbed, warns Roark of the dangers represented by the Wynand papers and by the factors in human nature that make them possible.
At the end of Part One, Rand has introduced the five major characters of the book — Howard Roark, Dominique Francon, Gail Wynand, Peter Keating, and Ellsworth Toohey — although most of the characters have not yet met one another. As the conflict develops, the meeting of the characters occurs in subsequent chapters.
