“Well, I like that!” said Menelaus. “If she has been neglected, kindly tell me who neglected her? You speak as though it were my fault!”

“We both of us left her, though for different reasons,” said Helen. “I’ll take the blame, if you like, but now we are here again, let us repair the harm. You share that ambition, I assume. For me, nothing is more important this morning; if you are too busy to put your mind on it now, will you fix a time when we can talk? But you really aren’t busy, Menelaus. When I came in you were standing there, gazing out the door.”

“I wish you’d learn that a man may be profoundly occupied even standing still and gazing out of a door. You don’t half give me credit, Helen. If I didn’t think hard and often, this place wouldn’t hold together. It’s perilously run down. I rather think I’m planning well for my child if I merely keep the property in order.”

“You do manage well, Menelaus; no one appreciates it more than I. That’s why I want to talk about Hermione—it’s your advice we need, before she commits herself too far.”

“Commits herself to what?”

“Well, for one thing, to a husband.”

“Oh—Orestes.”

“That’s one possibility, I suppose,” said Helen. “She thinks she’s in love with him.”

“Good!” said Menelaus. “Then that’s settled. Was there anything else?”

“We haven’t finished with Orestes yet,” said Helen. “I don’t think it’s good that she imagines herself in love with him. I doubt if she knows what love is. She’s determined to marry him.”

“May I say ‘good’ again—since you’re asking my advice? Why shouldn’t they marry? I thought we all agreed to that long ago.”

“Exactly. Long ago. We’ve learned a good deal since. What’s experience for? Orestes is no husband for my child.”

“Do you refer to our child? I like to be counted in, while my advice is being asked. As a matter of fact, I know what you’re up to, Helen; you’ve made up your mind to do something or other, and you’re breaking the news to me. I’ve had my advice asked before. Now please understand, once for all, that Orestes suits me, if Hermione wants him. And I haven’t heard of any rivals. Come to think of it, you and I haven’t seen him—since when? We shouldn’t recognise him if we met. Hermione knows him much better than we do—they’ve been somewhat thrown together, I understand, by common interest in absent parents. What does she report of him?”

“She reports that she’s in love with him. Nothing more specific. I certainly have no first-hand acquaintance with him, but I know his mother and you know his father—that’s the politest way to put it; he must resemble one or the other.”

“I can’t say I ever liked your sister,” said Menelaus, “but you ought to be more complimentary to Agamemnon, I should think; you often approve of his point of view—at least, you usually side with him against me, and he’s uniformly civil to you. One of your admirers, in fact. But whatever you think of him and Clytemnestra, it seems unfair to lay the blame on Orestes.”