“I mustn’t listen to such talk,” said Hermione. “I knew there were men who thought as you do, but I never met one before. You make me feel creepy all over. Here I’ve known you since I was born, and you’ve been so careful of us all, yet you believe in such immoral things! I didn’t suspect it.”

“Watching this family in recent years has made me think a lot,” said Eteoneus, “about morality. Before that, I took the world for granted, and did what other men did—the ones I admired. I must say I can’t see that the modern ways are very different, or come to more satisfactory ends. I go on the principle that women are still what they were in my time—and men, too. I’m sorry people try to understand them by new theories. Now, you say I’m immoral, and it makes you creepy all over to hear me. Perhaps. But I rather think you were interested, or you wouldn’t have stayed to listen. That’s the way women used to be. You know how we always did after a fight, when we had captured a town. Your generation think it’s not civilized, but it was the correct thing when I was young, and no one complained. We’d kill the men, and then we’d take the women. Most of the women I’ve known, I met on such occasions. You think that kind of adventure is cruel to the women, don’t you? Well, I never had a girl that way who seemed to mind it very much; the protests were merely formal. They’d run away from you, and you’d catch them, and carry them off to some quiet place, and—well, that’s all there was to it. I can’t see that marriage is different, except in the length of the courtship. And it’s perfectly fair in war, as we used to go about it; the women knew in advance what would happen to them if their side got beaten—they’d be married to a stranger, but he’d be the better man. Now Achilles and some of the youngsters behave differently, I’m told; Chryseis was a captive, but he had nothing to do with her. He had the right to do as he liked, of course, but I don’t see any particular advantage in such conduct. Pyrrhus and Agamemnon have the old-fashioned point of view. Agamemnon was a great man. He made only one mistake.”

“Why, Eteoneus, according to your principles Paris was right!”

“I won’t say he was wrong,” said Eteoneus, “if he wanted to take so desperate a risk. They killed him, you remember. The whole episode would have been managed no differently in my day, except that your mother would not have returned.”

“You don’t mean you would have had my father kill her?”