“To-morrow we sail for Sparta.”

“So soon?”

“Is it too soon? You prefer Troy?”

“Not now,” said Helen, “and you remember I never had much preference for places. But so many ships and men to get ready in a day! You were longer in starting when you came—with more reason for haste, I should have thought. Why, there must be sacrifices, there are gods to think of, the wide dark ocean, the ghosts of so many dead to quiet before we go.”

“The dead are at peace and the gods are satisfied,” said Menelaus; “we’ve given the whole day to sacrificing. The ocean remains wide and dark. Agamemnon will continue the sacrifices for that and for some other things prayer cannot change. We have had words about it and parted. He and the host will stay a while longer, I go home to-morrow with my men and my captives.”

With her, he meant. He didn’t know how to say it. Not “with my wife and my captives.” He hadn’t the courage to say “you and my other captives.”

“Menelaus,” she said, “of course I shall share the journey with you, however unwisely you undertake it. But you are wrong, and your brother is right. Those who are conscious of wrong-doing need time for regret and for remorse, and those of us who are conscious of no wrong-doing, we most of all should offer sacrifices against our pride. You have your old common sense, Menelaus, an immediate kind of wit, but you still lack vision. If you had more vision you would be more conventional.”

“If I hear you,” said Menelaus, “you are advising me not to depart from established rules of conduct?”

“That is my advice,” said Helen.

“I am overtired and my brain refuses to work,” said Menelaus. “Will you return to—whatever place you have just come from, or shall I leave this tent to you? We start early in the morning.”

IV

The wind was against them, and the men were at the oars. Menelaus sat near the helmsman, and Helen before him, her face bare to the wind. The rowers looked up at her, not as in anger at one who had brought on them war and labour, but curiously at first, then with understanding and awe, as though there were a blessing in the boat. Menelaus watched the change in their gaze, and wondered why he had come to Troy—and remembered why.

Helen shifted her position, for the first time in hours, and looked in his eyes. The oarsmen looked up at him, too; they forgot to row.

“Menelaus,” she said, “you should have offered sacrifices. There is something very strange about this boat.”

“On the contrary,” he replied, “the boat is perhaps the only thing here that is beyond criticism. The wind is unfavourable, but the men row well, except when you distract them.”

“In Troy at this moment, or somewhere along the shore,” she said, “Agamemnon offers up prayers which I dare say will be effective; he will doubtless reach home. Our own prospect seems to me uncertain. You know my point of view—I have no love for adventure unless I know where I’m going.”