José O’Riely

José O’Riely, also called Pepe, is a Spanish painter in Santa Fe whose work and relationship with Eveline Hutchins briefly give shape to her search for a life beyond domestic duty. He encourages her artistic ambitions and becomes her lover, but their connection ends when his existing family and economic dependence make a shared future impossible. Through him, the novel sets Eveline’s romantic expectations against obligations that cannot be wished away.

Identity and Circumstances

O’Riely is a slender young Spaniard with a tobacco-colored face and dark green eyes, living in Santa Fe with Lola, his Mexican wife, and their children. The account presents his circumstances as materially precarious: he paints, takes odd carpentry jobs, and sometimes poses as a model. His household grows through Lola’s repeated pregnancies, while his own artistic work does not provide a dependable living. He is therefore both a maker of ambitious images and a man whose day-to-day choices are shaped by the need to earn money and support his family.

Eveline encounters him while he is painting the Hutchins family’s garage doors. She asks him to pose for a pastel, and he criticizes the result so sharply that she cries. He apologizes, tells her she has talent, and offers to teach her to draw. The exchange establishes a relationship in which criticism and encouragement arrive together: O’Riely does not flatter her work, but he treats her artistic development as worth his attention. Eveline, who has been living an unhappy year amid household duties and care for her parents, responds to that attention as a rare source of animation.

Art and Social Vision

O’Riely’s paintings give his artistic identity a political dimension. He shows Eveline large retablos painted on plaster, which she compares to Italian primitive art. He explains that he paints martyrs, not Christian ones, but figures from the working class suffering under exploitation. His description sets his subjects against the preferences of Lola, who wants him to paint wealthy ladies because that might earn more money. O’Riely asks Eveline which course she thinks is best; she dislikes being grouped with rich women, yet the paintings thrill her, and she promises to publicize them among her friends. She decides she has discovered a genius.

That response reveals an early alignment between them, though not an equal understanding of their positions. Eveline wants to support the work she admires and is unsettled by the class category O’Riely assigns to her. He, meanwhile, has to weigh artistic purpose against immediate income. After their first meetings, he stops accepting payment for posing or criticizing her pictures, but sometimes borrows small sums from her as a friend. Their artistic connection thus develops alongside a practical imbalance: Eveline can offer money and access to her circle, while O’Riely must continue finding ways to live.

Relationship with Eveline

Before O’Riely begins courting her, Eveline has already decided that their connection must become a real affair; she feels that something must happen in her life soon. Their meetings are difficult to arrange. Her studio stands close behind her family’s house, where her parents or visiting friends might interrupt them, and people in the small town have begun noticing how often O’Riely visits. One night, while the Hutchins chauffeur is away, they meet in his room above the garage. Their intimacy does not fulfill Eveline’s expectation of ecstatic transformation. O’Riely is gentle, but she experiences the encounter as strangely familiar rather than transporting.

Afterward, he speaks of the secrecy as degrading and says he wants them to meet openly, in sunlight and fresh air, instead of like criminals. He imagines drawing her and using her body as inspiration for a painting. He also tells her to take precautions against pregnancy, while saying he would be proud to have a child with her and noting that she is wealthy enough to support one. Eveline is horrified by the casualness with which he raises the prospect. The moment reveals a difference in how they approach the affair: he speaks practically about its possible consequences, while she is distressed by the bluntness and by the future his words imply.

Exposure and Separation

For the rest of the winter, they meet a couple of times a week at a deserted cabin in a rocky canyon outside town. Eveline rides there by one route while O’Riely walks by another, and they call the place their desert island. The private name gives their meetings a sense of separation from ordinary life, but that separation proves fragile. Lola discovers hundreds of drawings of the same naked girl in O’Riely’s portfolios and comes to the Hutchins house looking for Eveline, threatening her. Eveline is frightened but stays composed. She tells Dr. Hutchins that O’Riely drew her but denies that anything else passed between them, blaming Lola’s suspicions on ignorance. Her father scolds her for imprudence but believes her, and the family keeps the affair from her mother.

Eveline sees O’Riely only once more. He says that he cannot abandon Lola and the children to starve, and that he must live with his family; romantic life classes do not feed him. He describes Lola as a good woman, though stupid and untidy, and says she has made him promise not to see Eveline again. Eveline turns away before he has finished and rides off on her horse. The ending leaves their artistic and personal connection unresolved as a possibility, but not as an ongoing relationship: O’Riely’s family obligations and dependence on the household he has formed determine his choice, while Eveline’s departure closes their meetings.