“H’m!” said Menelaus. “Your mother would say that passion is a form of intelligence. When she gets on that love-of-life talk, she makes me uncomfortable because I half think she means I don’t love her enough. If I loved her as she imagines she deserves, she’d say I had all the love of life necessary. I never meant to say this to anyone, but I’d feel relieved to put it into words. When I first met her, she was no more beautiful than she is now, I dare say, but she had the added effect of novelty; you couldn’t conceive of such a person if you hadn’t seen for yourself. When she chose me, I won’t say I felt as though it were a dream, or anything of that sort; I just felt that she had made a mistake. The other suitors would have felt the same way. I couldn’t persuade myself that I belonged to that loveliness. When we were safely married and I took her home, and we were supposed to be settling down to a normal existence, I was pretty much in torment; I wanted her, I had got her, and she always seemed to be contemplating me as you might an infant, half amused; it seemed as though she were saying to herself, ‘He wants to worship this beauty! Well, let him go ahead and worship. But he’s not quite up to it, poor child!’ The fact is, Hermione, I wasn’t up to it, and I never have been. I can’t do without her, and I don’t know what to do with her. Ordinary beauty calls for human embraces, in the love we are accustomed to speak of, but the men who have had Helen in their arms have all been baffled and humbled; you can’t embrace a stream of music, or light on the sea. You needn’t tell me—I know she has craved for a lover who would be her equal, but there is none. In my heart I forgave her long ago, especially since Paris was no more of a success than I. The reason I didn’t kill her that night was that when I saw her there she seemed younger than ever, and strangely virginal; and it came over me that in the sense in which I have been speaking, nobody, not even I, had ever loved her, and since I had failed, there was no point in punishing her. Of course, she was looking her best that night, too. But the moment we had words, I began to be irritated with her, as I was before Paris came. She is so inaccessible, she makes me feel so inadequate, she is so close to laughing at me most of the time … Well, this is more than I intended to say. You may forget it at once. Whatever you do, don’t repeat it to Orestes. But you see, I understand your mother from my point of view, and since you have hers, as you think, you might as well have mine. We shan’t be different now, not in any marked respect. She will be lovelier as she grows older, and I dare say I shall be more irritable.”