“Certainly not!” said Menelaus. “He and I don’t sleep under the same roof!”

“Why not, pray?”

“I won’t have him in the house, that’s why not. I wonder I put up with you—you—! I can’t excuse myself for listening to your impudence—telling me—you telling me—what your ideas are of a satisfactory love and a happy home! So far your good looks have got you out of what you deserved—may the gods forgive themselves for that!—but it won’t be your fault if you don’t go too far, even yet. You haven’t the first instincts of a decent woman! You took me in at the beginning—this morning, I mean—with your solicitude for your child’s future. Much you care for your child’s future! Sooner or later you give yourself away—it’s your love affairs, not Hermione’s, we’re to plan for! Any man, old or young, mean or noble, any at all, when the mood comes on you to make a fool of him! You loved Achilles, and still do, dead or alive, so I’m to invite his son here as the next best! For Hermione to see! Much chance she’d have of seeing him! Paris—Hector—Achilles—I won’t mention the years, but can’t you consider you’ve had your day? And quite a day! Measure in all things; do confine your disgrace to one generation!”

“Menelaus,” said Helen, “your bad manners when you lose your temper are nothing new, but I had no idea you were so jealous. Jealousy is the one form of insanity which is dishonest. It begins in a wilful perversion of the facts. If I had ever given you any cause for jealousy, and if you had ever thought well of me, you would have grieved over your generous but unintelligent mistake; you wouldn’t have cursed me for being myself, therefore sufficiently cursed already. If you thought me in love with Pyrrhus, you wouldn’t be content to live with me, you wouldn’t be at peace, just to know that Pyrrhus was out of my reach; you couldn’t bear to live with me, if you thought me what you just said. You reminded me of our years. It’s too late, therefore, to improve your manners. But I detest lying, at any age. Try to be honest with yourself, Menelaus, and try to be as frank with me as I am with you. I will take no insults from you—and you may understand that nothing true is to me insulting. The details of my life are well known—largely through my own efforts to disguise nothing. Your career, I regret to say, is more obscure. But for this once we are going to understand each other completely and equally. Do you wish me to stay here as your wife, honoured and respected? There’s no question of other men for the moment—this is between you and me. Do you want me? Or do you wish to kill me? If you really have no use for me, I won’t stay a day longer. If you’d feel better to kill me, I’ll gladly go and bring your heroic sword. You left it in the dining-room, I think. But it’s one or the other. Which do you want?”