Dominique returns to New York. She wanders the streets as if she is searching for something. She likes watching the people in the streets because she feels impervious to their hatred; they cannot hurt her. She decides to quit her job, and tells Alvah, but when he asks her why, she says she was joking, wondering what he'd say. She admits to herself that either keeping her job or leaving it would be for the man from the quarry, and keeping it would be harder.
Dominique talks to Ellsworth about how she doesn't quite fit at the newspaper; he says he wants her to stay anyway. They talk about Roark (she is unaware that Roark is the workman from the quarry) and his drawings for the Enright building. She says he should commit suicide for designing such a building. It is too perfect, and it would only be defiled by people looking at it, touching it, or talking about it.
Steven Mallory is sentenced to two years, which is suspended because of Toohey's insistence on leniency.
The first meeting of the young architects club takes place. It is chaired by Peter Keating, along with Gordon Prescott and several other unknown architects, and called the Council of American Builders. Ellsworth, acting as an advisor, tells them how noble their profession is. Dominique comes into the meeting, implying but not saying that she doesn't like what they're doing. When Toohey asks Peter why he didn't invite Roark, he replies that he doesn't know him. Peter asks Dominique if she knows him, and she says no, she has only seen his sketches. When asked what she thinks of them, she replies, "I don't think of them." In the cab ride home, Keating kisses Dominique's wrist, and senses revulsion, not indifference. He asks her who did this to her, and she replies that it was a workman at the quarry. She tells him they must never see each other again, because he is everything she despises in this world, although she is quick to say it is through no fault of his own. He says he will keep trying.
