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 gear—­what are these to a youth, with his eyes on the face of the eternal Helen?—­that face we meet once and once only, and either win—­to lose all the rest, or lose—­and win what?  What is there to win if that be lost?  So, at all events, it was with me, who, after winging away from those old gables yonder on all the adventurous winds of the seven seas, and having in truth looked into many a fair face in every corner of the globe, suddenly, in a certain little island of the French West Indies, came upon the face I had been unconsciously seeking.