Eveline’s affair with José O’Riely

Eveline Hutchins’s affair with José O’Riely grows out of her search for artistic and personal intensity in Santa Fe. She imagines the relationship as a decisive escape from her sheltered life, but its secrecy, the difference in their circumstances, and O’Riely’s obligations to his wife and children ultimately make that imagined escape untenable.

Attraction and the Affair’s Beginning

O’Riely, a painter who supported himself with occasional carpentry and modeling, first drew Eveline’s attention when she asked him to pose for a pastel. His criticism made her cry; he then apologized, encouraged her, and offered to teach her to draw. At his home, he showed her paintings devoted to working-class martyrs. Eveline was moved by the work and promised to promote it among her friends, deciding she had discovered a genius. The encounter joined artistic admiration to a new personal attachment.

O’Riely accepted no money for posing or criticizing her work, though he sometimes borrowed small sums from her as a friend. Before he began courting her, Eveline had already decided that this relationship must become a real affair: she felt that something needed to happen to her soon. Their difference in class was present from the start. O’Riely’s paintings challenged the world of wealthy patrons, while Eveline disliked being grouped with rich women even as she offered to use her social connections on his behalf.

Secrecy and the Desert Meetings

Finding a place to meet was difficult. Eveline’s studio stood behind her family’s house, where her parents or visitors might interrupt them, and people in the small town had begun to notice O’Riely’s visits. One night, while the Hutchins’ chauffeur was away, they went to O’Riely’s room above the garage. Afterward, he said he disliked the secrecy and wanted them to meet openly, in the sun and air, rather than as if they were criminals. He also spoke of Eveline as a possible subject for his art and raised the possibility of a child; his casualness about the prospect disturbed her.

That winter they met a couple of times a week at a deserted cabin off a trail in a rocky canyon behind town. Eveline rode there while O’Riely took a different road, and together they called the cabin their desert island. The name gave their hidden meetings the feeling of a refuge, but that isolation depended on keeping his household and Eveline’s family outside their shared world.

Exposure and Separation

The arrangement broke down when Lola found hundreds of drawings of the same girl in O’Riely’s portfolios and came to the Hutchins house looking for Eveline. Though frightened, Eveline stayed composed and told Dr. Hutchins that O’Riely had drawn her but that nothing else had happened between them. She dismissed Lola’s suspicions as ignorance. Dr. Hutchins scolded Eveline for imprudence but believed her; the affair was kept from her mother.

Eveline saw O’Riely only once more. He explained that he could not leave his wife and children to starve: he was poor, needed to work, and had promised Lola not to see Eveline again. He also described Lola as a good woman, despite his complaints about her, and insisted that he could not live on romantic art alone. Eveline turned away before he had finished and rode off. The ending exposes the unequal meanings the relationship had acquired: Eveline had treated it as a possible transformation of her life, while O’Riely’s existing family and material dependence set limits he would not cross.