“I’m coming to her character now,” said Menelaus. “I spoke of her beauty first, as being of some importance. I’m really not sure she has any character; I wonder if she has a heart. Do you know—I can speak to you more intimately about your mother, now you’re married—do you know I never saw your mother excited about anything. She says she was passionately in love with Paris—passionately! I wish I could have seen her in the state of mind she describes. Before she ran off with him, she was treating him with that calm detached sort of courtesy she has for almost anybody; each time she began to speak to him, I was worried with the fear that she had forgotten his name. Imagine how I felt when she went off with him! And imagine how I feel when she talks to me—to me, in that brazen way of hers—about the passion she had for Paris! She’s a very selfish person, I say. Always determined to be frank! Who wants her to be frank? You’d think she was yielding to a public demand. Now, this wish to send for Orestes at once. What reason had she for fancying he wished to come?”

“Father, I’m the last one to say mother treated you kindly, or behaved properly. I meant only that she has a magnanimous side I hadn’t noticed, and perhaps you haven’t noticed it either. She can allow for a different point of view, and she’s not stubborn. You are, father, a little bit, you know, and perhaps that’s why you don’t get on better with her.”

“I don’t know what Orestes would say if he heard this talk,” said Menelaus, “but it bodes no good for him. He may prove to be as forgiving a husband as I have been, but will he get the slightest credit for it? No! They’ll say that you are magnanimous!”

“Father, are you getting mixed in your figures of speech, or do you really expect me to duplicate mother’s career? Not even Orestes thinks I have the equipment. Since he saw mother, he has praised me for everything but my looks.”

“But he hasn’t seen her since he was a baby!”

“He saw her two days ago—had a very satisfactory talk with her. That’s exceedingly fine when you come to think of it; his mother was her sister, yet she was positively sympathetic, Orestes said, and didn’t upbraid him, nor imply that he was beyond mercy, not a syllable of that kind. Orestes confirmed my impression that with all her faults, she’s a very remarkable woman.”