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Chapters (39)
  1. Cover
  2. The Private Life of Helen of Troy
  3. Contents
  4. NOTE
  5. PART I
  6. I
  7. II
  8. III
  9. IV
  10. V
  11. VI
  12. VII
  13. PART II
  14. I
  15. II
  16. III
  17. IV
  18. V
  19. VI
  20. PART III
  21. I
  22. II
  23. III
  24. IV
  25. V
  26. PART IV
  27. I
  28. II
  29. III
  30. IV
  31. V
  32. PART V
  33. I
  34. II
  35. III
  36. IV
  37. V
  38. VI
  39. VII

“You are right again,” said Helen—“partly right. The part you don’t see, however, is the essence of the matter. I hesitate to answer you now, Hermione, for though I’m frank enough on any subject, there are things I’d rather not speak of unless to do so would be of service to you. This may well be the last time we discuss these questions; I’ve said all I could and told you all I know. Or almost all. I’ll tell you the rest now. You’d like to have your man all to yourself. So would any woman who is in love—and men feel the same way about women. Love is very proprietary. But you go a step further, as I’ve noticed in others of your generation, and you want your man never to have cared for anyone else. I dare say Orestes wouldn’t feel sure of a wife who had previously lost her heart to another man. Now, that’s all nonsense. If the world is to act on that philosophy, there’s misery in store for lovers—all sorts of hypocrisy, and dark secrets, and skeletons in the closet. It’s your notion of destined mates again, but in a sillier form. Of course, when two people love each other—it’s safer to say, while they love—the rest of the race, for them, will not exist; in that sense you ought to have your lover quite to yourself. I should hate to see you married to Pyrrhus unless you loved him passionately, and he you. But let me tell you this, Hermione—the man who can make a woman most happy is the one who could love many a woman, who even has lived with several of them, perhaps as Pyrrhus has done, and who at last devotes all his love to her alone. By your theory, the best husband ought to be the man who couldn’t possibly have loved before. Your theory is wrong. That kind of man, you’ll find, quite frequently is incapable of loving anybody very much … I suppose you think this wisdom of mine immoral.”

“I do,” said Hermione.

II

II

“So do I,” said Menelaus. “I heard that last speech of yours as I came in; in fact, I paused on the threshold, not to interrupt it. What sort of trash are you telling the child, Helen?”

“Truth, not trash,” said Helen. “I didn’t make the world.”

“There was a lot in your love-of-life talk, a while ago, that escaped me,” said Menelaus. “I begin to grasp it now. You think my loyalty to you is unmanly, an evidence of weakness. You admire men like Achilles and his precious son! Let me tell you this, dear wife—if I had loved you the way they love women, you wouldn’t be here now. That night in Troy, I would have cut your throat!”