“To tell you the truth,” said Menelaus, “I hadn’t thought much myself about your marrying—perhaps not nearly enough—until Helen talked to me about it; we expected you to marry Orestes sooner or later, but meanwhile I was glad of you here—your being in the house makes it very pleasant for me. On the other hand, I dare say you are old enough to have a home of your own and lead your own life; it’s easy for your mother and me to forget where the years have gone, and to think you still a child. So I certainly do want you to marry. I haven’t a thing against Orestes—nothing whatever, and strictly speaking I don’t blame him for his parents. But Clytemnestra does spoil it all for me, I must say. I wish you could find a safe young man whose mother isn’t too good-looking.”

“It’s no use, father, I simply won’t marry Damastor!”

“Well, who wants you to?”

“Mother suggested it, and I gather from your last words that you agree.”

“Your mother wants you to marry Damastor?”

“Now, I won’t say that, father—she suggested him, and said I might do worse, but I doubt if she likes him, and I thought her tone rather satiric. I don’t know mother well enough to get all her meanings.”

“I don’t either,” said Menelaus, “but of one meaning I’m sure—it isn’t Damastor she means you to marry!”

“Who, then?”

“She’ll tell you in her own way. Remember to be completely surprised when she comes out with it. But just to provide against a shock, I’ll drop the hint now—she intends to marry you to Pyrrhus.”

“But I don’t know the man! I don’t want him! He probably doesn’t want me!”

“It’s curious,” said Menelaus, “but those very ideas occurred to me when she proposed it.”

“Then why does she persist in so crazy a scheme?”

“Better ask why she schemes at all,” said Menelaus. “I rather think your mother is getting old. She doesn’t look it, I’ll admit, but she’s in her forties and been through a great deal. All this talk about the love of life’s a bad sign. The same way with this match-making. You’d think marriage would be an exhausted adventure for her. It is; that’s why she begins to arrange marriages for others. When we are finished playing leading parts ourselves, we try to play God and control the new actors. It’s a gesture of farewell.”

“Is Pyrrhus good-looking?” asked Hermione.

“Very,” said Menelaus.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about the gesture of farewell,” said Hermione. “If mother happened to like him, I should say her youth is not beyond recovery.”

“You’ve thought of that too?”

“What too, father?”

“I mean, you think she may be in love with Pyrrhus?”

“Oh, I know only what you’ve told me, but I don’t agree that mother is growing old. Quite the reverse. She’s so—what shall I call it?—she’s so vital, she makes me feel, after a talk with her, as though I had been keeping up with some one who had wings.”