The face in the glass smiled dimly, between two parted veils of hair.

“What is a gentleman?”

The face in the glass suggested that this was indeed a subtle and a difficult question.

“It was not his business if I chose to tire myself.  Would it have been his business if he’d been a gentleman?”

The face in the glass offered no opinion.

“I think I like him best when he’s impertinent.  He is so very funny, poor dear, when he tries to be polite.”

The face in the glass, framed by two white arms raising a column of hair, was suffused with rosy mirth.

“I wonder what Horace really thinks of him?”

The face, triumphantly crowned with its dark coil, looked grave.

“He is a gentleman.  At least, he lied like one.”

By this time Lucia was in bed, and there was no face in the glass to dispute or corroborate that statement.

CHAPTER XXIII

The next morning he gave into her hands the manuscript of Helen in Leuce.  It had arrived two or three days ago, packed by Spinks between his new shirts.  She had expected to feel a little guilty as she received the familiar sheets; but as she glanced over them she saw that they were anything but familiar; what she had to deal with was a clean new draft.

She had a fairly clear recollection of the outline of the play.

In Act I Helen lands in the enchanted island of Leuce, and is found watching the ship that brought her sailing away with the dead Menelaus, for he, being altogether mortal, may not follow her there.  The Chorus tells the story of Helen, her rape by Theseus, her marriage with Menelaus, her flight with Paris, the tragedy of Troy and her return to Argos.  It tells how through all her adventures the godhead in her remained pure, untouched, holding itself apart.

In Act II Helen is asleep, for the soul of Leda still troubles her divinity, and her mortality is heavy upon her.  Helen rises out of her sleep; her divinity is seen struggling with her mortality, burning through the beauty of her body.  Desire wakens in Achilles, and in Helen terror and anguish, as of one about to enter again into the pain of mortal life.  But he may not touch her till he, too, has put on immortality.  Helen prays for deliverance from the power of Aphrodite.  She rouses in Achilles a great anger against Aphrodite by reminding him of the death of Patroclus; so that he calls down upon the goddess the curses of all the generations of men.

It was this Act that lived in Lucia’s memory.  Act III she had not yet read, but she had gathered from the argument that Pallas Athene was there to appear to Achilles and divest him of his mortality; that she was to lead him to Helen, whose apotheosis was supposed to be complete; the Act concluding with two choruses, an epithalamium celebrating the wedding of Helen and Achilles, and a Hymn in praise of Athene.