“I don’t think your wife would tell her that Pyrrhus is a brute,” said Eteoneus. “If she told her what I’ve just said to you, she’s almost the first woman I ever heard of who could be honest on that subject. But Hermione and I had talks about Orestes, as you remember, before you came home, and she was beginning to have these ideas then. It’s too late in the world for the kind of innocence you’re wishing for, Menelaus. Everybody wants to know everything—to talk about it, anyway. Besides, if Hermione didn’t pick up the tendency for herself, she’d get it from Orestes. I told you he was a bad influence.”

“I detect a flaw in your logic,” said Menelaus. “If it’s all right for you to talk frankly to a young girl, why isn’t it correct for Orestes to be just as frank on the same themes? You ought to be like Orestes—he’s a man after your own heart.”

“I don’t like him at all,” said Eteoneus. “When I talk to Hermione or to anyone else, I try to say what I’ve learned from experience. There’s an element of life in it, I hope. That’s what shocked Hermione. If I talk about women, because I’ve been pretty intimate with a lot of them, Hermione thinks me wicked, but if Orestes with no experience at all goes over the same ground, Hermione thinks him wise. Humbug! Mark my words, Menelaus, Orestes has a dirty mind, and he’s a dangerous character. I admit he’s strait-laced—it comes to the same thing. His kind want to talk about everything but not to know about it. If a man is living like a saint, and has the thoughts of a saint, I’ll say he’s a saint. But if he’s brooding on ideas which have no connection with his life, I don’t trust his life, in the long run. The great thing is to be all of a piece. I’m suspicious of Orestes, and of Charitas, and I might as well say, of your daughter.”

“If it weren’t for certain differences in voice and features,” said Menelaus, “I might think it was Helen talking to me. I never dreamed you shared her theories of life.”

“I hope I don’t,” said Eteoneus. “Your wife isn’t my ideal at all. I blame her for most of the trouble that’s come on us.”

“Whether you like her or not,” said Menelaus, “you talk much the same way. That is, it sounds like part of her conversations. She’s all for sincerity, you know, and her life has been mixed up in love-affairs. You’re for sincerity too, it seems, and the revelation of your amorous past distressed my daughter. I begin to see what sincerity comes to.”