“I won’t have Pyrrhus here, that’s all there is to it,” said Menelaus. “Later it may be safe, but as you say—”

“That’s not what I meant, exactly,” said Hermione. “She’s a difficult person to talk about accurately. About my marriage, now, I really think she’s very serious. I really believe she’s sincere. But she can’t possibly suspect the effect she has on some people. I suppose I’ve seen her weaknesses too clearly to come under the spell, but on the other hand I’m glad I can feel her earnestness. In fact, mother’s too earnest. The whole trouble is her lack of humour. You have it, and thank heaven I’ve inherited a little, but she hasn’t any.”

“Isn’t that good!” said Menelaus. “I wish I’d thought of that when she was having it out with the younger generation. Hermione, that’s the absolute truth—she’s terribly in earnest, and since she has no sense of humour, she’s always liable to be earnest in the wrong direction.”

“And she’s so energetic,” said Hermione. “If she got me once married, I wonder what she’d give her attention to next. I don’t see how a person who looks so serene, even placid at times, can be such a miracle of energy. This frankness she’s always talking of is just an excuse to start something. I begin to understand now what the old stories mean when they speak of a devastating beauty.”

“Yes, that’s your mother,” said Menelaus. “I suppose it’s a gift. I dare say I waste time blaming her for it.”

“But at least she ought to know herself better by this time,” said Hermione. “She ought to make allowance for the way the susceptible will admire her and imitate her. When you’ve conceded all you can, you can’t excuse her entirely for misleading the innocent and the unsuspecting.”

“Oh, come, that’s a trifle strong,” said Menelaus. “She doesn’t mislead you, who I suppose are innocent, and no one who knows her seems to be unsuspecting. Every one, from the family gate-keeper to the neighbouring gossips, seems to hope for the worst. Besides, the curious thing is she has had her triumphs most often with the sophisticated. At least they’ve been married. Paris wasn’t innocent nor unsuspecting.”

“I was thinking of Adraste, that girl she’s so fond of,” said Hermione. “I don’t care for the type, but she certainly is devoted to my mother, and I rather think she’ll imitate all her faults.”

“What is Adraste’s type?” said Menelaus. “Every once in a while you talk like your mother—you refer to some private notion of your own as though it were an axiom any but a fool would know. I don’t know what types there are, nor which one is Adraste.”

“Oh, she has what mother would call the love of life, I suppose,” said Hermione. “In plain words, she seems to me—it isn’t a nice thing to say of a girl, but I think she is rather passionate. You know what I mean—the unpleasant sense. If there were a man about and she were in love with him, I dare say she’d say yes after almost no courtship at all.”