A month has passed. Guy Francon is pleased: The great architecture critic Ellsworth Toohey has written a review praising the Melton Building, recently erected by Francon & Heyer. Keating has become a favorite of Francon, and he's learned a great deal about the old man, including the fact that he's a widower with a nineteen-year-old daughter off at college. Also: Lucius Heyer was apparently brought on as Francon's partner for his social connections, not for his skill as an architect.
Keating has made friends in the office, and one evening he offers to finish a drafting assignment for his closest friend, Tim Davis, who is supposed to complete the assignment but pines to see his girlfriend Elaine. Keating finishes the work himself, then goes to see an old friend from Stanton, Katie Halsey. He is quite fond of her, in an indifferent sort of way, and he finds himself so comfortable with her that he blurts out things he wouldn't normally admit to anyone, even himself: Francon is an old fraud; it won't be long before Keating takes Tim Davis's place in the firm. Keating is appalled at his own ruthless ambition, and he is positively frightened when he find out Katie's uncle is ... Ellsworth Toohey! How will he be able to hold back from using Katie to get close to the great critic?
On the other side of town, Henry Cameron has come to recognize that Howard Roark is an uncompromising young man of genius, and thus headed toward the doom of universal scorn—a man bearing the mark of Cain, walking among the people. One day, Roark, you will design a building worthy of your brilliance, and no one will allow you to build it! Go away now, Roark! Learn to modify your principles while you still can! But of course that's exactly the future Roark looks forward to, because it proves his heroism. So there.
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