CHAPTER Five.
In the afternoons Vandover worked in his studio, which was on Sacramento Street, but in the mornings he was accustomed to study in the life-class at the School of Design.
This was on California Street over the Market, an immense room partitioned by enormous wooden screens into alcoves, where the still-life classes worked, painting carrots, grapes, and dusty brown stone-jugs.
All about were a multitude of casts, the fighting gladiator, the discobulus, the Venus of Milo, and hundreds of smaller pieces, masks, torsos, and the heads of the Parthenon horses.

Flattened paint-tubes and broken bits of charcoal littered the floor and cluttered the chairs and shelves.

A strong odour of turpentine and fixative was in the air, mingled with the stronger odours of linseed oil and sour, stale French bread.
Every afternoon a portrait class of some thirty-odd assembled in one of the larger alcoves near the door.

Several of the well-known street characters of the city had posed for this class, and at one time Father Elphick, the white-haired, bare-headed vegetarian, with his crooked stick and white clothes, had sat to it for his head.
Vandover was probably the most promising member of the school.

His style was sketchy, conscientious, and full of strength and decision.