For two weeks after the wedding, Dominique and Gail do not leave the penthouse; they are completely disconnected from the world of the city below them. Even once he returns to work, she never leaves, and once he returns in the evening, they continue their isolation from the world. That is, until she begins to like the isolation. At once, she begins inviting guests and going out. Gail begins working harder than he ever has, surprising everyone. Only Ellsworth understands that this is the worst thing that could have happened to Gail.
Sally Brent, one of the most popular writers for The Banner, decides to write a piece about Dominique. In their interview, Dominique tells her everything she wants to know; Sally gives the copy to Gail, and she is fired. She then writes a piece about his life in the New Frontiers.
Gail gives Dominique a diamond necklace. She comments that although a particular story in The Banner about a Bronx housewife who murders her husband is sordid, the public's curiosity about the story is more so. Public curiousity made it possible for her to wear the diamond necklace. She says that she is proud to wear it. Gail says another way of looking at it is that he took something as sordid as that story and turned it into diamonds.
Dominique and Gail go to see No Skin Off Your Nose, the play which everyone has been raving about. Jules Fouger has said that only the very fine can understand and appreciate it. They get back to the penthouse and Dominique thinks about the fact that The Banner, the same force that destroyed the Stoddard Temple, made this play possible. Things are either exalted or destroyed; there is no middle ground. Gail asks her what is wrong, and she goes on sarcastically about how this play is his crowning achievement; he tells her that although this was much worse than the story of the Bronx housewife, it is still better than offering a good play to be ridiculed. He says that the kind of pain that comes from this only goes down to a certain point. Dominique suddenly stops him. This is what Roark feels. Gail wants to know what it was about those words that disturbed her, but she will only say that he doesn't have the right to speak them.
