“They shouldn’t be prudent so young,” said Helen, “it’s a bad sign. It’s beginning at the wrong end. Youth should begin by loving life. Prudence is a form of caution, it’s a control of your impulses—but you must have the impulses before you can control them. Or it’s a kind of foresight—but how can you have foresight until you have accumulated some knowledge of the world? And how can you accumulate experience if you begin by avoiding it? When they’re young they can have nothing better in them than the love of life. Now, that’s just what they haven’t, and their prudence is therefore an empty thing, in my opinion.”

“From what I’ve heard of the young people,” said Menelaus, “they’ve about all the love of life we can stand. Eteoneus thinks so of Hermione and Orestes, and I dare say he’s right.”

“Since when have you gone to your gate-keeper for your philosophy, Menelaus? Eteoneus is a faithful drudge, I have always thought—and a very ignorant man. He knows as much of life as one can contemplate from a door-mat. I feel you are trifling with me. Won’t you be serious?”

“I am serious. I can be more so, if you really wish it. But before we begin, may I say I didn’t go to Eteoneus for anything—he came to me. He sometimes leaves the door-mat to seek a moment of my society, and though he’s not the companion of my choice, he’s far from being a fool. But seriously—as you put it—since you won’t leave me in peace, what’s all this about Hermione’s bad upbringing, and the love of life she hasn’t got, and the husband she ought to have? I’m distracted this morning, Helen, over the news of Agamemnon, and other matters seem less important than perhaps they are. What do you want?”

“I want your attention,” said Helen, “and if I can’t have it now, I’ll wait. But Hermione is in a danger, I think, from which we could save her if we planned quickly, and since I fear she got into this peril through my leaving her, I’ll run no risk of not saving her now. If we don’t prevent it, she’ll marry Orestes, and that marriage, I’m sure, will bring her nothing but misery. She’s seen no other man of her age but Orestes and Damastor—Charitas’s boy. By contrast Orestes must seem a god. It’s usually by contrast. Some day she’ll meet a real man, and be sorry she married prematurely.”

“Upon my word!” said Menelaus. “Upon—my—word!”

“What she needs is experience—experience,” Helen went on, “and as quickly as possible!”

“Oh, that’s what she needs, is it?” said Menelaus. “Well, perhaps I can arrange for some one to elope with her without marrying her, and after a while she’ll be able to pick the kind of husband she won’t want to run away from. Let’s consider it settled. Have you any one in mind for the trial flight?”

“You’re not serious now, of course,” said Helen. “But do you know, that wouldn’t be a bad idea, if it could be carried out. It can’t, I suppose, and it does go rather beyond what I thought of. Besides, it wouldn’t do any good, she wouldn’t learn anything, unless there were somebody she wanted to elope with, and I don’t think there is.”