Hermione was put out that her mother wasn’t angry. It seemed her turn to speak, but she couldn’t get her wits together; she felt unexpectedly exhausted. She had been standing for some time; now she sat down on the couch beside her mother.

“Your facts are correct,” Helen went on, “but some aspects of them you are too young to understand. I ought to have made you happy—one’s child ought to be happy. But not one’s lover; I deny any obligation there. If we only knew beforehand, and accepted the implications, that happiness is the last thing to ask of love! A divine realisation of life, yes, an awakening to the world outside and to the soul within—but not happiness. Hermione, I wish I could teach you now that a man or a woman loved is simply the occasion of a dream. The stronger the love, as we say, the clearer and more lifelike seems the vision. To make your lover altogether happy would be a contradiction of terms; if he’s really your lover he will see in you far more than you are, but if you prove less than he sees, he will be unhappy.”

“Don’t you think you’re a peculiar case?” said Hermione. “To you love may be this uncertain kind of trouble, but to other people, as far as I’ve observed them about here, it’s a fairly normal, reliable happiness. At least they don’t talk as you do, they look comfortable, and they congratulate the young who have agreed to marry.”

“My dear child,” said Helen, “I am a peculiar case—everyone is who has known love. But there’s some general wisdom about the matter which I’d share with you if I could. It’s useless to try. You’ll have to learn for yourself when you fall in love.”

“I am in love,” said Hermione—“with Orestes.”

“Yes, child, in love—but not deeply. I dare say he has never disappointed you, as yet.”

“Never!”

“The early stage,” said Helen. “We have to build up the illusion before we can be disappointed.”

“I’ve a new light on scandal,” said Hermione, “and I’ll do my best to grasp your idea of love. May I ask you a personal question? I suppose this theory ought to apply to you as well as to the men who loved you. Has love for you, too, always been a mistake?”

“Never a mistake,” said Helen, “always an illusion.”

“So when you ran off with Paris, it wasn’t really Paris you loved—as you found out later?”

“You might say that—it wasn’t the real Paris.”

“But you’ll admit you hadn’t the excuse you give me, of inexperience,” said Hermione. “You had already loved my father, and I suppose had found out that he, too, wasn’t what you wanted. You shouldn’t have been deceived a second time.”

“I married your father,” said Helen; “I never said I loved him. But not to shock you and not to misrepresent myself, let me say I’ve always been fond of Menelaus, and he’s an impeccable husband. Yet your argument would miss the point, even if I had been passionate over him. I should then have to confess the same disillusion in my love for Menelaus as in my love for Paris, but perhaps I preferred my illusion for Paris. It’s the illusion you fall in love with. And no matter how often it occurs, no matter how wise you are as to what the end will be, one more illusion is welcome—for only while it lasts do we catch a vision of our best selves. In that sense, as I understand it, love is a disease, and incurable.”