of telling a tale--a manner so ancient, so original--is
akin, in practice, to recent theories of what art should be, and what art
seldom is, perhaps never is, in modern hands.

Modern enough, again, is the choice of a married woman for the heroine of
the earliest love tale. Apollonius Rhodius sings (and no man has ever
sung so well) of a maiden's love; Virgil, of a widow's; Homer, of love
that has defied law, blindly obedient to destiny, which dominates even
Zeus. Once again, Helen is not a very young girl; ungallant
chronologists have attributed to her I know not what age. We think of
her as about the age of the Venus of Milo; in truth, she was "ageless and
immortal." Homer never describes her beauty; we only see it reflected in
the eyes of the old men, white and weak, thin-voiced as cicalas: but hers
is a loveliness "to turn an old man young." "It is no marvel," they say,
"that for her sake Trojans and Achaeans slay each other."

She was embroidering at a vast web, working in gold and scarlet the
sorrows that for her sake befell mankind, when they called her to the
walls to see Paris fight Menelaus, in the last year of the war. There
she stands, in raiment of silvery white, her heart yearning for her old
love and her own city. Already her thought is far from Paris. Was her
heart ever with Paris? That is her secret. A very old legend, mentioned
by the Bishop of Thessalonica, Eustathius, tells us that Paris magically
beguiled her, disguised in the form of Menelaus, her lord, as Uther
beguiled Ygerne. She sees the son of Priam play the dastard in the
fight; she turns in wrath on Aphrodite, who would lure her back to his
arms; but to his arms she must go, "for the daughter of Zeus was afraid."
Violence is put upon beauty; it is soiled, or seems soiled, in its way
through the world. Helen urges Paris again into the war. He has a heart
invincibly light and gay; shame does not weigh on him. "Not every man is
valiant every day," he says; yet once engaged in battle, he bears him
bravely, and his arrows rain death among the mail-clad Achaeans.

What Homer thinks of Paris we can only guess. His beauty is the bane of
Ilios; but Homer forgives so much to beauty. In the end of the "Iliad,"
Helen sings the immortal dirge over Hector, the stainless knight, "with
thy loving kindness and thy gentle speech."

In the "Odyssey," she is at home again, playing the gracious part of
hostess to Odysseus's wandering son, pour