and
scorn done to the body of Priam the Old; and Cassandra in the tent of
King Agamemnon shuddered and rocked herself about; and when dogs had
eaten the fair body of Paris, then the Achaeans turned their eyes with
longing to their homesteads. So there was a great ship-building and
launching of keels; and at last King Menelaus embarked for peopled
Lacedaemon, and took his lovely wife with him in the ship, and stayed his
course at Rhodes for certain days, resting there with Helen. There he
set a close guard about her all day; and as Paris had loved her, so
loved he. But she was wretched, and spent her days in weeping; and grew
pale and thin, and was for ever scheming shifts how she might be
delivered from such a life as she led. Ever by the door of the chamber
stood Eutyches, and watched her closely, marking her distress. And she
knew that he knew it; for what woman does not know the secret mind of a
man with regard to her?

* * * * *

So, on a day, sat Helen by the window with her needlework in her lap,
and looked out over the sea. Eutyches came into the room where she was,
silently, through the hangings of the door, and kneeling to her, kissed
her knee. She turned to him her sad face, saying, "What wouldst thou of
me, Eutyches?"

"Lady," he said, "thy pardon first of all."

She smiled upon him. "Thou hast it," she said; "what then?"

He said to her, "Lady, I have served thee these many years, and no man
knows thy mind better than I do, who know it only from thy face. For I
have been but a house-dog in thy sight. But I have never read it
wrongly; and now I know that thou art unhappy...."

"Yes," she said, "it is true. I am very unhappy, and with reason."

Eutyches drew from his bosom a sharp sword and laid it upon her knee.
"Take this sovereign remedy from thy servant," he said. "No ills can
withstand it, so sharp it is." And he left her with the bare sword upon
her knees. She hid it in the coverings of the bed.

Now, when King Menelaus had feasted in the hall, he came immediately
after into the Queen's chamber. And he said to her, "Hail, loveliest of
women born!" and again, "Hail, thou Rose of the World!"

She answered him nothing, but went to her women and suffered herself to
be made ready. Then came the King in to her and began to woo her; but
she, looking strangely upon him by the light of the torch in the wall,
sat up and held him off with her hand. "Touch me not, Menelaus,"