“The parallel between Hector’s corpse and your wife eludes me,” said the gate-keeper, “but I gather, Menelaus, that you think a great deal of good has come out of the war—not for the Trojans, I take it, not for Hector, not for Patroclus nor for Achilles, but for you. The logic of your position, I suppose, is that your wife did you a good turn when she ran away with another man.”

“I don’t know that my gate ever needed watching so much as it does at this moment,” said Menelaus. “Did you happen to favour my wife with any of your conversation just before she left for Troy? I’ve often wondered what drove her away; Paris was never the only reason enough.”

VI

“How good of you, Helen, to return my call so promptly,” said Charitas. “I was distressed that you weren’t at home. Just as soon as I heard of your unexpected return, I went over to your house. It seemed the least a girlhood friend could do. There’s so much I want to hear. The other side of the garden is shaded—we’ll go there.”

“You’ve changed the garden, Charitas, I shouldn’t have known it,” said Helen. “It was lovely before, but you’ve improved it since I saw it last.”

“Time does wonders,” said Charitas. “Helen, your servant can wait outside with the sunshade—you won’t need it.”

“She may stay with me,” said Helen. “Adraste and I get on well together. Come here, Adraste, I want my friend to see you—a friend of my girlhood.”

“Oh, Helen, how beautiful she is! What an amazing person you are, to keep a beautiful girl like that in the house.”

“I have no prejudice against beauty,” said Helen—“why shouldn’t I have Adraste with me?”

“Well, perhaps your husband isn’t susceptible, and you haven’t a son to worry about. My boy, Damastor—you remember him? Oh, of course you don’t; he was about to be born when you left for Egypt. Damastor is handsome as Apollo, and he loves everything beautiful. It’s terrible. I’ve tried to bring him up well. He’s an artist, I’m afraid—my father had a second cousin who was. I’ve tried to keep his mind occupied, and there are not many occasions in Sparta. There’s Hermione, of course, and I’d be ever so pleased if he took a fancy to her. I’ve interested him in gardening—most of this is his work. But I don’t think it will hold him long.”

“You’re afraid,” said Helen, “that if he saw a beautiful girl he’d fall in love with her?”

“Well, you know what I mean,” said Charitas.

“No, I don’t,” said Helen.

“I want him to be a credit to his bringing up, and fall in love at the right time with the right girl,” said Charitas. “You and I know that beauty often leads to entanglements with the inexperienced.”

“It often leads to love, I believe,” said Helen, “and in the presence of great beauty all men seem to be inexperienced. There isn’t enough of it, I suppose, to get used to. You wish your boy to be respectable—fall in love with a plain woman? Or entirely conventional—marry one he doesn’t love at all?”