Elizabeth Stein passed by and he nodded to her.
"Who is she?" asked Angela.
"She's a socialist agitator and radical. She sometimes speaks from a soap-box on the East Side."
Angela studied her carefully. Her waxen complexion, smooth black hair laid in even plaits over her forehead, her straight, thin, chiseled nose, even red lips and low forehead indicated a daring and subtle soul. Angela did not understand her. She could not understand a girl as good looking as that doing any such thing as Eugene said, and yet she had a bold, rather free and easy air. She thought Eugene certainly knew strange people. He introduced to her William McConnell, Hudson Dula, who had not yet been to see them, Jan Jansen, Louis Deesa, Leonard Baker and Paynter Stone.
In regard to Eugene's picture the papers, with one exception, had nothing to say, but this one in both Eugene's and Angela's minds made up for all the others. It was the Evening Sun, a most excellent medium for art opinion, and it was very definite in its conclusions in regard to this particular work. The statement was:
"A new painter, Eugene Witla, has an oil entitled 'Six O'clock' which for directness, virility, sympathy, faithfulness to detail and what for want of a better term we may call totality of spirit, is quite the best thing in the exhibition. It looks rather out of place surrounded by the weak and spindling interpretations of scenery and water which so readily find a place in the exhibition of the Academy, but it is none the weaker for that. The artist has a new, crude, raw and almost rough method, but his picture seems to say quite clearly what he sees and feels. He may have to wait—if this is not a single burst of ability—but he will have a hearing. There is no question of that. Eugene Witla is an artist."
Eugene thrilled when he read this commentary. It was quite what he would have said himself if he had dared. Angela was beside herself with joy. Who was the critic who had said this, they wondered? What was he like? He must be truly an intellectual personage. Eugene wanted to go and look him up. If one saw his talent now, others would see it later. It was for this reason—though the picture subsequently came back to him unsold, and unmentioned so far as merit or prizes were concerned—that he decided to try for an exhibition of his own.