“Exactly,” said Helen. “You are probably something of both—I meant to say, your deeds were both bad and good. You acted from the highest motives you had, but maybe they weren’t high enough. Your morals are beyond criticism, but perhaps your information was inadequate. I notice that most people feel they may safely act when they know they are right. It strikes me, after a few experiments, that when we are sure we are right we had better be careful. We’ve probably overlooked something. In love, as you say, we can’t help ourselves—I’m referring to everything else. Your father had what seems to me—seemed so at the time, when I heard of it—an obsolete faith in sacrifices. A god, to him, was a being from whom you bought what you wanted. With the clearest conscience, therefore, he sacrificed his daughter in the hope of securing a favourable wind. Your father and my husband were the poorest sailors I ever met. Menelaus steered right into Egypt, trying to get home to Sparta. I got him to make some sacrifices himself, finally. They were good for his stubbornness and pride, whether or not they affected the wind. Pride is a worse sin than your father was guilty of, yet the consequence of his sacrifice was more terrible. It’s puzzling to me. You think I did wrong in going to Troy, though you understand, I’m grateful to know, that I couldn’t have done otherwise. But I dare say you think Menelaus was compelled to bring on a great war, destroy a city, take hundreds to their death, all because his wife ran away. You think I’m to blame. Well, I don’t see it. I think it was pride and a lack of imagination. He, not I, caused all those deaths, though he acted with a clear conscience and is rather satisfied with himself, and I knew I was doing a tragic thing, though I couldn’t help it. Which of us is really responsible for the suffering that followed? I think a decent man could lose his wife without bringing on a war.”

“Don’t you think a wife should be punished for deserting her husband?”

“It depends upon the wife and the husband,” said Helen. “I should have to know the special case you refer to.”

“I was thinking of you,” said Orestes.

“Perhaps I should be punished—perhaps I am punished, but not by Menelaus. He got his friends to destroy Troy and let themselves be killed, but here he and I are back again. I know he feels he accomplished something, and I think it best not to ask him what.”

“Why not?”