But go she must. Aphrodite is a hard taskmistress, and the mysterious bond of beauty which chains Helen to her cannot be broken. It is in vain, too, that Helen taunts Paris: he reminds her of the first fruition of their love in the island Cranaë; and at the last she has to lay her down at his side, not uncomplying, conquered, as it were, by the reflex of the passion she herself excites. It is in the chamber of Paris that Hector finds her. She has vainly striven to send Paris forth to battle; and the sense of her own degradation, condemned to love a man love-worthy only for the beauty of his limbs, overcomes her when she sees the noble Hector clothed in panoply for war. Her passionate outbreak of self-pity and self-reproach is, perhaps, the strongest indication given in the _Iliad_ of a moral estimate of Helen's crime. The most consummate art is shown by the poet in thus quickening the conscience of Helen by contact with the nobility of Hector. Like Guinevere, she for a moment seems to say: "Thou art the highest, and most human too!" casting from her as worthless the allurements of the baser love for whose sake she had left her home. In like manner, it was not without the most exquisite artistic intention that Homer made the parting scene between Andromache and Hector follow immediately upon this meeting. For Andromache in the future there remained only sorrow and servitude. Helen was destined to be tossed from man to man, always desirable and always delicate, like the sea-foam that floats upon the crests of waves. But there is no woman who, reading the _Iliad_, would not choose to weep with Andromache in Hector's arms, rather than to smile like Helen in the laps of lovers for whom she little cared. Helen and Andromache meet together before Hector's corpse, and it is here that we learn to love best what is womanly in Leda's daughter. The mother and the wife have bewailed him in high thrilling threni. Then Helen advances to the bier and cries: Hector, of brethren dearest to my heart, For I in sooth am Alexander's bride, Who brought me hither: would I first had died! For 'tis the twentieth year of doom deferred Since Troyward from my fatherland I hied; Yet never in those years mine ear hath heard From thy most gracious lips one sharp accusing word; Nay, if by other I haply were reviled, Brother, or sister fair, or brother's bride, Or mother (for the king was alway mild), Thou with kind words the same hast pacified, With gentle words, and mien like summer-tide. Wherefore I mourn for thee and mine own ill, Grieving at heart: for in Troy town so wide Friend have I none, nor harborer of good-will, But from my touch all shrink with deadly shuddering chill.