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Chapters (39)
  1. Cover
  2. The Private Life of Helen of Troy
  3. Contents
  4. NOTE
  5. PART I
  6. I
  7. II
  8. III
  9. IV
  10. V
  11. VI
  12. VII
  13. PART II
  14. I
  15. II
  16. III
  17. IV
  18. V
  19. VI
  20. PART III
  21. I
  22. II
  23. III
  24. IV
  25. V
  26. PART IV
  27. I
  28. II
  29. III
  30. IV
  31. V
  32. PART V
  33. I
  34. II
  35. III
  36. IV
  37. V
  38. VI
  39. VII

“You really are in love with her, aren’t you?” said Hermione. “She’s not nearly so beautiful as you think her.”

“I ought to have said,” Menelaus went on, “that the full quality of her charm has never been discernible to her own sex. The instinct of self-preservation, I suppose.”

“Do you know,” said Hermione, “since you have confessed so much, I’ll admit that I’m jealous of mother. I mean, I’m afraid that her charm will upset Orestes. You’ve convinced me! I wish you’d help me, father!”

“I’ll do anything I can.”

“Then I’ve an idea—see Orestes to-morrow! If you’ll see him and forgive him in the hour he would have spent with mother, I’ll look after him from then on!”

“Of course, this isn’t a neat little plot!” said Menelaus. “You never intended to work me into a position where I’d have to receive your husband! Oh, no!”

IV

IV

“Your going is a particular grief to me,” said Helen, “because I fear I’m partly the cause of it. I shouldn’t want you to leave us, anyway, but it’s worse if it’s personal. I’m not accustomed to have people leave me.”

“When Menelaus brought you home,” said Eteoneus, “I told him I was too old to take up with new ideas, and perhaps I ought to retire. The new ideas I referred to were some of Hermione’s and her husband’s. Ever since, I’ve tried to find out where I stood. Sometimes I could follow what you were all doing and saying, sometimes I couldn’t. It has been very wearing. When I wake in the morning now, I catch myself groaning and saying, instinctively, ‘My God, must I get up to it again!’ and at night when I go to bed my pulse isn’t steady—I’m all in a flutter. It’s time I went.”

“It must have been a frightful ordeal for you in the last weeks,” said Helen. “I shall never be able to thank you enough for your loyalty to us while we were in deep trouble. But it’s over now, don’t you think? If you stay with us, we can promise you quiet at last.”

“Isn’t somebody going to kill Orestes?” said Eteoneus. “That’s logically the next step.”

“Perhaps, but I believe he is safe. After all, he and Pyrrhus had a perfectly open fight, and the popular version is that they fought over Hermione. You know how people feel about such things—they don’t take revenge on the man who wins the woman, not after a fair fight. I don’t see much sense in it all—the fighting or anything else, but that’s the way they do it. I quite understand your reluctance to report more of such adventures—the murder of Orestes, for example.”