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give him a ship and send him home.' 'It is a pity,' said the Queen. She rose to withdraw, and directed that Helen should be brought to her. With parted lips and round eyes of wonder Paris watched them go.

IV

It was not until the following day that he saw Helen again, and he spent a restless night in wondering what her next move would be. It would be untrue to say that his confidence in Helen was unshaken. As he recalled their days of furtive love-making in Sparta, when her passion and her amorous invention had excelled his as much as her cool diplomacy excelled his now, he could not quite convince himself that circumstances alone were changed; the change was in Helen herself. All that she had done for them both might have been an added bond, but it was in fact a barrier. She did not confide in him. She did not let him feel that their interests were one. It had not yet occurred to him that she might throw him over, but he realized wearily that she was not a simple person like himself, and that possession of her, instead of being the great simplification he had expected, was a complication perhaps too great for his powers.

Early in the morning a messenger brought him to her, and to his relief he was alone with her. It was the first time since they had left Sparta, and he ran to her with open arms. But Helen checked him.

'Paris,' she said, 'I am on my honor. Be brave, my dear friend. This is our last talk together, and we must be like brother and sister.'

'What!' shouted' Paris, standing before her, his arms still outstretched. 'What do you mean? What have they done to you?'

"They have shown me,' said Helen gently, 'that we have done wrong. Love is not the only thing in the world. There are greater gods than Aphrodite.'

'Good heavens!' said Paris. 'Are you throwing me over?'

'You make it very hard,' said Helen. 'If we had planned together to rob a shrine or to kill a defenseless person, and you had come to me and said, "Helen, we must not do this; it is wrong," I should not have raged at you. I should have thought to myself, "Paris is an honorable man; there must be reason in what he says." And I should have thought it over, and if I came to agree with you I should have been grateful to you; and if I did not agree with you I should still believe you were acting for the best, to satisfy your own sense of what was right.'

'Helen,' said Paris, 'you make me sick with your sense of what is right. There is only one right thing now for us, and that is to be true to each other. You have left everything for me; I have risked everything for you. We are man and woman grown; we knew the nature of our act, and we knew the responsibility we undertook toward each other. Was it mere impulse that gave you to me in Sparta? I thought your whole life was in it as mine was. But you can't mean it! Don't frighten me so. Are there listeners for whom you are speaking?'

'I don't know whether there are listeners,' said Helen. 'Whether there are or not, I can say but the one thing. Some day, Paris, you will see that I am right.'

Once in his shepherd days Paris had killed a lioness who attacked the flock, and had found beside her a tiny whelp. This he brought to his hut, and tended it, and found it the prettiest of little pets. It grew more rapidly than he

could have wished, but in spite of the warnings of his friends he kept the affectionate creature as his housemate. One day as he was teasing it in play it leaped straight at him with bared tooth and claw, and if comrades had not been at hand Paris's pet would have torn his throat out. The scene and its emotion flashed through his consciousness now.

'You are terrible,' said he to Helen. 'You are dangerous. You ought to be killed.'

'Keep your hate alive, Paris, to help you to fight for Troy when the Greeks come.'

'But the Greeks will not come if you are not there.'

'I think they will,' said Helen. 'My husband's brother Agamemnon saw quite well what you and I were planning; why do you think he let us come away without hindrance? Simply because it would make a very convenient cause of war. The truth is, Paris, Agamemnon is going to take Troy because he believes the Greeks should control the Hellespont.'

"The Greeks control the Hellespont!' shouted Paris. 'My brother Hector will have a word or two to say to that!'

'I have no doubt,' said Helen, 'that Hector and Agamemnon will exchange

many words on the windy plains of Troy, whether Helen is there or not. And doubtless Agamemnon will insist that I am there, and the stupid chiefs will believe him, and doubtless as long as men sing songs, songs will be sung of how Troy fell for shameless Helen's sake, for a runaway princess is a more inspiring thing to fight for and to sing of than a trade route. But it will not be true... Paris, they will not let us talk longer. The guard is at hand to take you to the sea. Forget me until you can think of me more kindly. As for me, I shall stay with these good people and keep myself for Menelaus.' At this Paris's nerves were fairly overset and he burst into a horrible laugh. He flung his arm across his eyes and ran from the room, and as he met the guard on the threshold he cried through his laughter, 'She is keeping herself for Menelaus!'

Helen sat awhile pensive until a maiden came to summon her to the Queen. 'My dear,' said the Queen, 'you have behaved nobly. Sit beside me with your work, and tell me the story you hinted at yesterday of your illtreatment at the hands of Theseus.'

And the Queen gave Helen a golden distaff and a silver basket that ran upon wheels, and the wheels were rimmed with gold.

THE 'PARDON' AT GUINGAMP

BY MARJORIE LANE

NOTRE Dame de Bon Secours,

See a little maid and poor

Humbly standing at thy door.

(Ave Maris Stella!)

We have traveled far to-day

In our cart all sweet with hay

At thy shrine to kneel and pray.

(Ora pro nobis!)

Scarce a stone upon the square

Could we see for people there,

And gay stalls were everywhere
Marketing enchantments!

Silver chains and tasseled pins,

A tinsel fish that twirls and spins,
Lace for coiffes, and ripe red cherries,
Quimper plates and fresh strawberries,
Shoes, and velvet-streamered hats
With silver buckles, and butter pats
Nestling cool beneath green leaves,
Silken shawls of lustrous weaves,

And little saints to place before

A house, enthroned above the door

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It is natural that the collapse of German political power, and the violent and unreasonable defamations of everything German which in this country resulted from the war, should have brought to German-Americans much distress, much searching of the heart, and much groping about for the true sources of German greatness and for the elements in German character from which a new era of high national culture may be hoped for. The following reflections may be considered as an individual reflex of this general state of mind.

I

I agree with two of the most distinguished German writers of to-day, Count Keyserling and Thomas Mann, that the Germans are not, in the true sense, a political nation. Only I do not, like them, see in this a title of honor, but an unfortunate limitation of German character. The whole course of German history has been a tragic confirmation of this fact. There have not been absent individual political achieve ments of high merit. I am thinking of the constitutions of the mediæval free cities, the organization of the Prussian State under Frederick the Great, the reform legislation of Stein and Hardenberg, the transformation by Bismarck of a loose federation of states (Staatenbund) into a centralized state-confederacy (Bundesstaat), the model administration of the German cities of to-day. But only in rare moments of high distress or high enthusiasm has the whole

nation been united in common action. The sober, persistent work in building up a free national commonwealth, such as the English people has engaged in for centuries, the German people has hardly known.

How erratic, for the most part, was the foreign policy of the mediæval German Empire. What a waste of human material and mental energy was entailed in the oft-repeated crossing of the Alps by German armies for the sake of winning the Roman crown, the foolish attempt to crush the Lombard city-republics, the fantastic designs to extend German sovereignty even as far as Sicily. To speak, as has been frequently done by German historians, with patriotic fervor of these high-flown imperialistic schemes of the Ottos, Fredericks, and Henrys, to consider them evidences of noble national aspirations, is a piece of strange political aberration. Far from having added to national power and prosperity, this fantastic policy of conquest has harmed the Empire both at home and abroad; at home, through the delegation of sovereign rights to the higher nobility, forced upon the Emperors thereby, and the consequent weakening of the central power; abroad, through the kindling of bitter national hatreds and resentments. The political disintegration and isolation of Germany, then, at the end of the Middle Ages were the natural result of centuries of neglect of what should have been the main concern of the ruling classes, the knighthood, and the free

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