10 A. M., but the letter finally did come and this dispelled all his
intermediary doubts and fears. At last he was to have a hearing! This
man might see something in his work, possibly take a fancy to it. Who
could tell? He showed the letter to Angela with an easy air as though it
were quite a matter of course, but he felt intensely hopeful.

Angela put the studio in perfect order for she knew what this visit
meant to Eugene, and in her eager, faithful way was anxious to help him
as much as possible. She bought flowers from the Italian florist at the
corner and put them in vases here and there. She swept and dusted,
dressed herself immaculately in her most becoming house dress and waited
with nerves at high tension for the fateful ring of the door bell.
Eugene pretended to work at one of his pictures which he had done long
before--the raw jangling wall of an East Side street with its swarms of
children, its shabby push-carts, its mass of eager, shuffling, pushing
mortals, the sense of rugged ground life running all through it, but he
had no heart for the work. He was asking himself over and over what M.
Charles would think. Thank heaven this studio looked so charming! Thank
heaven Angela was so dainty in her pale green gown with a single red
coral pin at her throat. He walked to the window and stared out at
Washington Square, with its bare, wind-shaken branches of trees, its
snow, its ant-like pedestrians hurrying here and there. If he were only
rich--how peacefully he would paint! M. Charles could go to the devil.

The door bell rang.

Angela clicked a button and up came M. Charles quietly. They could hear
his steps in the hall. He knocked and Eugene answered, decidedly nervous
in his mind, but outwardly calm and dignified. M. Charles entered, clad
in a fur-lined overcoat, fur cap and yellow chamois gloves.

"Ah, good morning!" said M. Charles in greeting. "A fine bracing day,
isn't it? What a charming view you have here. Mrs. Witla! I'm delighted
to meet you. I am a little late but I was unavoidably detained. One of
our German associates is in the city."

He divested himself of his great coat and rubbed his hands before the
fire. He tried, now that he had unbent so far, to be genial and
considerate. If he and Eugene were to do any business in the future it
must be so. Besides the picture on the easel before him, near the
window, which for the time being he pretended not to see, was an
astonishingly virile thing. O