The Sport of the Gods | Page 3

his brother and sister-in-law, most of his time
was spent abroad, where he could find just the atmosphere that suited
his delicate, artistic nature. After a visit of two months he was about
returning to Paris for a stay of five years. At last he was going to apply
himself steadily and try to be less the dilettante.
The company which Maurice Oakley brought together to say good-bye
to his brother on this occasion was drawn from the best that this fine
old Southern town afforded. There were colonels there at whose titles
and the owners' rights to them no one could laugh; there were brilliant
women there who had queened it in Richmond, Baltimore, Louisville,
and New Orleans, and every Southern capital under the old regime, and
there were younger ones there of wit and beauty who were just
beginning to hold their court. For Francis was a great favourite both
with men and women. He was a handsome man, tall, slender, and
graceful. He had the face and brow of a poet, a pallid face framed in a
mass of dark hair. There was a touch of weakness in his mouth, but this
was shaded and half hidden by a full mustache that made much
forgivable to beauty-loving eyes.
It was generally conceded that Mrs. Oakley was a hostess whose guests
had no awkward half-hour before dinner. No praise could be higher
than this, and to-night she had no need to exert herself to maintain this
reputation. Her brother-in-law was the life of the assembly; he had wit
and daring, and about him there was just that hint of charming danger
that made him irresistible to women. The guests heard the dinner
announced with surprise,--an unusual thing, except in this house.
Both Maurice Oakley and his wife looked fondly at the artist as he
went in with Claire Lessing. He was talking animatedly to the girl,
having changed the general trend of the conversation to a manner and
tone directed more particularly to her. While she listened to him, her
face glowed and her eyes shone with a light that every man could not
bring into them.
As Maurice and his wife followed him with their gaze, the same
thought was in their minds, and it had not just come to them, Why

could not Francis marry Claire Lessing and settle in America, instead
of going back ever and again to that life in the Latin Quarter? They did
not believe that it was a bad life or a dissipated one, but from the little
that they had seen of it when they were in Paris, it was at least a bit too
free and unconventional for their traditions. There were, too,
temptations which must assail any man of Francis's looks and talents.
They had perfect faith in the strength of his manhood, of course; but
could they have had their way, it would have been their will to hedge
him about so that no breath of evil invitation could have come nigh to
him.
But this younger brother, this half ward of theirs, was an unruly
member. He talked and laughed, rode and walked, with Claire Lessing
with the same free abandon, the same show of uninterested good
comradeship, that he had used towards her when they were boy and girl
together. There was not a shade more of warmth or self-consciousness
in his manner towards her than there had been fifteen years before. In
fact, there was less, for there had been a time, when he was six and
Claire three, that Francis, with a boldness that the lover of maturer
years tries vainly to attain, had announced to Claire that he was going
to marry her. But he had never renewed this declaration when it came
time that it would carry weight with it.
They made a fine picture as they sat together to-night. One seeing them
could hardly help thinking on the instant that they were made for each
other. Something in the woman's face, in her expression perhaps,
supplied a palpable lack in the man. The strength of her mouth and chin
helped the weakness of his. She was the sort of woman who, if ever he
came to a great moral crisis in his life, would be able to save him if she
were near. And yet he was going away from her, giving up the pearl
that he had only to put out his hand to take.
Some of these thoughts were in the minds of the brother and sister now.
"Five years does seem a long while," Francis was saying, "but if a man
accomplishes anything, after all, it seems only a short time to look back
upon."

"All time is short to look back upon. It is the looking forward to