ing's" mother. As I
looked at it, my eyes involuntarily sought the garden with its palms and
its orange trees. Far indeed had the son of her heart wandered, like so
many sons of stately English mothers, from that lilied moat and those
old gables, and the proud old eyes that would look on her son no more
forever.

And then in my privileged inspection of these sacred symbols, carried
across so many storm-tossed seas from that far-away Latium, I came upon
another photograph, hanging over the writing-desk--a tall,
Spanish-looking young woman of remarkable beauty. It needed but one
glance to realise that here was Calypso's mother; and, as was natural,
I stood a long time scanning the countenance that was so like the face
which, from my first sight of it, had seemed the loveliest in the world.
This was a flower that had been the mother of a flower. It was a face
more primitive in its beauty, a little less touched with race, than the
one I loved, but the same fearless natural nobility was in it, and the
figure had the same wild grace of pose, the same lithe strength of
carriage.

As I stood looking at it, lost in thought, I heard the "King's" voice
behind me. His step was so light that I had not heard him enter the
room.

"You are looking at Calypso's mother!" he said. "She was a beautiful
creature. I will tell you of her some day, Ulysses."

And indeed, that very night, as we sat over our pipes, he told me; and
without a word of his, I knew that the loneliness of his heart had
singled me out for his friend, since, for all his love of speech, he was
not the man to speak easily of the deep things of his heart.

"Beauty is a very mysterious thing, friend Ulysses," he began, his eyes
musing on the face above his desk, "as our old friends of the Siege of
Troy knew all too well. The eternal Helen! And in nothing is the
divinity of youth so clearly shown as in its worship of beauty, its
faith that there is nothing the world holds--the power and the glory,
the riches and the honours--nothing so well worth fighting for as a
beautiful face. When the world was young, the whole world thought that
too. Now we make ignoble war for markets, but the Greeks made nobler
warfare--for a beautiful face--

"The face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.

"So is it still with every young man. 'Fair Helen! make me immortal with
a kiss' is still his cry. Titles and broad lands, and all such earthly
g