to cover her face up to the eyes,
she had stood there to watch the fighting, or the games about the pyre
of some chieftain dead, or the manege of the ships lying off Tenedos.
Indeed, when he had been there in his chariot, urging an attack upon the
gate, he had seen Paris come out of the house to Helen where she stood
in the garden; and he saw that deceiver take the lovely woman in his
arm, and with his hand withdraw the veil from her mouth that he might
look at it. The maids were all about her, and below raged a battle among
men; but he cared nothing for these. No, but he lifted up her face by
the chin, and stooped his head, and kissed her twice; and would have
kissed her a third time, but that by chance he saw King Menelaus below
him, who stood up in his chariot and watched. Then he turned lightly and
left her, and went in, and so presently she too, with her veil in her
hand, not yet over her mouth, looked down from the wall and saw the
King, her husband. Long and deeply looked she; and he looked up at
her; and so they stood, gazing each at the other. Then came women from
the house and veiled her mouth, and took her away. Other times, too, he
had seen her there, but she not him; and now, at this turn of the year,
the memory of her came bright and hard before him; and he walked under
the wall of the house in the gray of the morning. And as he walked there
fiercely on a day, behold she stood above him on the wall, veiled, and
in a brown robe, looking down at him. And they looked at each other for
a space of time. And nobody was by.

[Illustration: THE ABDUCTION OF HELEN
FROM THE PAINTING BY RUDOLPH VON DEUTSCH]

Shaking, he said, "O Ruinous Face, art thou so early from the wicked
bed?"

She said low, "Yea, my lord, I am so early."

"These ten long years," he said then, "I have walked here at this hour,
but never yet saw I thee."

She answered, "But I have seen my lord, for at this hour my lord
Alexandros is accustomed to sleep and I to wake. And so I take the air,
and am by myself."

"O God!" he said, "would that I could come at thee, lady." She replied
him nothing. So, after a little while of looking, he spoke to her again,
saying, "Is this true which thou makest me to think, that thou walkest
here in order that thou mayst be by thyself? Is it true, O thou
God-begotten?"

She said, smiling a little, "Is it so wonderful a thing that I should
desire to be alone?"

"By my fathers," he said, "I think it wonderfu