“Oh, come now, Helen,” said Menelaus, “I was off my guard.”

“No, you weren’t,” said Helen, “though it would be no excuse if you were; I shouldn’t think better of the insult for knowing it was spontaneous. But you went from talking to me, and from promising not to repeat such language, and you said the same thing again to my own daughter; now in her presence you tell me she agrees with you, and the child in self-defence has to explain she doesn’t. We’ve come to the end, Menelaus; I’ll go my way, and you go yours. Hermione, I ask you, on your honour, not to let your father start any story about a love-affair with Achilles, or any other falsehood to account for my leaving. I go because your father has his kind of mind.”

“I suppose the disgrace which will fall on you and me is a small matter in your eyes,” said Menelaus. “But at least you might consider the disgrace to Hermione, who is entirely innocent.”

“No disgrace will fall on her,” said Helen. “It will be only another instance of her misfortune in her parents. The disgrace, if there is any—of course there will be—will fall entirely on me.”

“That’s where it certainly ought to fall,” said Menelaus, “but it won’t—not entirely. I shall get some of it.”

“None whatever,” said Helen. “Your wife will simply have left you for the second time. She will be in disgrace, and you will be ridiculous.”

“I don’t see that,” said Menelaus.

“You will,” said Helen. “When a husband or a wife runs away, the injured party, so-called, gets sympathy but no admiration, not even the first time it happens. People who can command love are not left behind. But if the desertion becomes a habit, there isn’t even sympathy. The habitually deserted is laughed at.”

“You mustn’t go, Helen,” said Menelaus, “you really must not.”

“I am going,” said Helen, “and I ask you to let me depart with some show of dignity in your manners, without words. Adraste and I can be ready to-morrow. I have several places in mind where we shall probably be welcome. There’s Idomeneus—”

“Helen,” said Menelaus, “I shan’t try to use force to keep you here; perhaps it wouldn’t succeed, if your determination is what you say it is. But I beg of you to stay. I surrender absolutely. I admit, before Hermione, I was altogether in the wrong. I have acted unworthily, I have—”

“Good-bye,” said Helen. “You have. But I am going.”

“Mother,” said Hermione, “if you’ll stay, I’ll do what you ask about Pyrrhus. I’ll welcome him here, in this house, before I marry Orestes.”

“You certainly ought to do that for your own sake, whether or not I stay,” said Helen, “and I dare say your father will consent to invite him as soon as I’m gone. It will be safe then.”

“He won’t come if he hears there’s another quarrel,” said Hermione. “I’m sure he’ll think father wants help in more wars.”