Vandover did poor work at Harvard and only graduated, as Geary said, “by a squeak.”  Besides his regular studies he took time to pass three afternoons a week in the studio of a Boston artist, where he studied anatomy and composition and drew figures from the nude.  In the summer vacations he did not return home, but accompanied this artist on sketching tours along the coast of Maine.  His style improved immensely the moment he abandoned flat studies and began to work directly from Nature.  He drew figures well, showed a feeling for desolate landscapes, and even gave promise of a good eye for colour.  But he allowed his fondness for art to interfere constantly with his college work.  By the middle of his senior year he was so loaded with conditions that it was only Geary’s unwearied coaching that pulled him through at all—­as Vandover knew it would, for that matter.

Vandover returned to San Francisco when he was twenty-two.  It was astonishing; he had gone away a pimply, overgrown boy, raw and callow as a fledgling, constrained in society, diffident, awkward.  Now he returned, a tall, well-formed Harvardian, as careful as a woman in the matter of dress, very refined in his manners.  Besides, he was a delightful conversationalist.  His father was rejoiced; every one declared he was a charming fellow.

They were right.  Vandover was at his best at this time; it was undeniable that he had great talent, but he was so modest about it that few knew how clever he really was.

He went out to dinners and receptions and began to move a little in society.  He became very popular:  the men liked him because he was so unaffected, so straightforward, and the women because he was so respectful and so deferential.

He had no vices.  He had gone through the ordeal of college life and had come out without contracting any habit more serious than a vague distaste for responsibility, and an inclination to shirk disagreeable duties.  Cards he never thought of.  It was rare that he drank so much as a glass of beer.

However, he had come back to a great disappointment.  Business in San Francisco had entered upon a long period of decline, and values were decreasing; for ten years rents had been sagging lower and lower.  At the same time the interest on loans and insurances had increased, and real estate was brought to a standstill; one spoke bitterly of a certain great monopoly that was ruining both the city and state.  Vandover’s father had suffered with the rest, and now told his son that he could not at this time afford to send him to Paris.  He would have to wait for better times.

At first this was a sharp grief to Vandover; for years he had looked forward to an artist’s life in the Quarter.  For a time he was inconsolable, then at length readjusted himself good-naturedly to suit the new order of things with as little compunction as before, when he had entered Harvard.  He found that he could be contented in almost any environment, the weakness, the certain pliability of his character easily fitting itself into new grooves, reshaping itself to suit new circumstances.  He prevailed upon his father to allow him to have a downtown studio.  In a little while he was perfectly happy again.