The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ruinous Face, by Maurice Hewlett

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Ruinous Face

Author: Maurice Hewlett

Release Date: June 21, 2007 [EBook #21885]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RUINOUS FACE ***

Produced by Jana Srna, Brian Janes and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

[Illustration: HELEN AND EUTYCHES]

THE
RUINOUS FACE

BY
MAURICE HEWLETT

ILLUSTRATED

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMIX

Copyright, 1909, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

_All rights reserved._

Published October, 1909.

"Hence there is in Rhodes a sanctuary
of Helen of the Tree."

--_Pausanias_, iii., 19, 9.

ILLUSTRATIONS

HELEN AND EUTYCHES _Frontispiece_

THE ABDUCTION OF HELEN _Facing p. 8_
From the painting by Rudolph von Deutsch.

HELEN OF TROY " _20_
From the painting by Sir Frederick Leighton.

PARIS AND HELEN " _30_
From the painting by Jacques Louis David in the Louvre.

THE RUINOUS FACE

When the siege of Troy had been ten years doing, and most of the
chieftains were dead, both of those afield and those who held the walls;
and some had departed in their ships, and all who remained were
leaden-hearted; there was one who felt the rage of war insatiate in his
bowels: Menelaus, yellow-haired King of the Argives. He, indeed, rested
not day or night, but knew the fever fretting at his members, and the
burning in his heart. And when he scanned the windy plain about the
city, and the desolation of it; and when he saw the huts of the Achaeans,
and the furrows where the chariots ploughed along the lines, and the
charred places of camp-fires, smoke-blackened trees, and puddled waters
of Scamander, and corn-lands and pastures which for ten years had known
neither plough nor deep-breathed ca