Accordingly it was with a vague hope and a secret desire for vengeance that she heard of the approach of a brilliant stranger, from a far more populous and flourishing city than Sparta, who came with gifts and a glib tongue to view the wonders of the island world. When his eyes fell on her, his unfeigned surprise filled her with exultation. To be so discerned, for her, was to be won. Those eyes could recognize divinity. No doubt he was preparing new fetters for her and new sorrows, but for a moment she would be free, and in following him she would feel herself once more the goddess. In fact, so long as they sailed the dark-purple sea, or rested in caves or in island bowers, all was pleasantness between them. Their very galley, with its white sails spread, took on something of Helen's beauty, and seemed a cloud wafted across the Aegean, or the swan, her father, riding on the rippled reaches of the Meander. Paris proved a candid and light-hearted lover; never vexed, he was all grace and mastery in small matters: one of those lordly travellers who can feel the charm of nature and of woman in every dime, however exotic, however pure, or however impure; and the incomparable Helen seemed indeed incomparable to his practised mind. He adored her, but he preferred other women. Moreover, she found that at Troy he counted for nothing. He moved amid battles and councils, quite at home in the scene, but never consulted; a prince turned shepherd, a familiar but superfluous ornament, like a fop or a ballet-dancer that everybody smiled upon and nobody respected. It was given him in the end to slay the redoubtable Achilles with a chance arrow, Apollo secretly directing the shaft, but he was no warrior. It was a useless triumph, as his abduction of Helen had been an innocent crime: both were the work of gods laughing at human arrogance. There were doubtless street rhetoricians in Ilium who upbraided Paris and Helen, as there are reasoning philosophers and politicians to-day who attribute the ascendancy or decay of nations to the ideas that prevail there, forgetting to ask why those particular ideas have been embraced by those peoples, when all ideas, in the universal market, are to be had gratis. The wise old Priam and his counsellors knew better. They did not disown Paris for his escapade, as they might so easily have done, nor did they return Helen to her wronged husband, useless as she was at Troy. They knew that the confused battles of earth must be fought over some nominal prize; men and animals will always be fighting for something, not because the thing is necessarily of any value to them, but because they wish to snatch it from one another. Helen had lent her name and image to colour an ancient feud, and make articulate the dull eternal contention between Asia and Europe. It was for existence that each party was fighting; but it added to their courage and self-esteem to say they were fighting for beauty, and that the victory of their side