ng Sun_ fortified
him against all thought of failure. _He was an artist._

He gathered up the various oils he had done--there were some twenty-six
all told now, scenes of the rivers, the streets, the night life, and so
forth--and went over them carefully, touching up details which in the
beginning he had merely sketched or indicated, adding to the force of a
spot of color here, modifying a tone or shade there, and finally, after
much brooding over the possible result, set forth to find a gallery
which would give them place and commercial approval.

Eugene's feeling was that they were a little raw and sketchy--that they
might not have sufficient human appeal, seeing that they dealt with
factory architecture at times, scows, tugs, engines, the elevated roads
in raw reds, yellows and blacks; but MacHugh, Dula, Smite, Miss Finch,
Christina, the _Evening Sun_, Norma Whitmore, all had praised them, or
some of them. Was not the world much more interested in the form and
spirit of classic beauty such as that represented by Sir John Millais?
Would it not prefer Rossetti's "Blessed Damozel" to any street scene
ever painted? He could never be sure. In the very hour of his triumph
when the _Sun_ had just praised his picture, there lurked the spectre of
possible intrinsic weakness. Did the world wish this sort of thing?
Would it ever buy of him? Was he of any real value?

"No, artist heart!" one might have answered, "of no more value than any
other worker of existence and no less. The sunlight on the corn, the
color of dawn in the maid's cheek, the moonlight on the water--these are
of value and of no value according to the soul to whom is the appeal.
Fear not. Of dreams and the beauty of dreams is the world compounded."

Kellner and Son, purveyors of artistic treasures by both past and
present masters, with offices in Fifth Avenue near Twenty-eighth Street,
was the one truly significant firm of art-dealers in the city. The
pictures in the windows of Kellner and Son, the exhibitions in their
very exclusive show rooms, the general approval which their
discriminating taste evoked, had attracted the attention of artists and
the lay public for fully thirty years. Eugene had followed their shows
with interest ever since he had been in New York. He had seen, every now
and then, a most astonishing picture of one school or another displayed
in their imposing shop window, and had heard artists comment from time
to time on other things ther