k me into
shame as once before thou didst trick me in the shape of Menelaus, who
was my lord. Now I will call on Zeus to blast thee with his bolts. Nay,
not on Zeus will I call, but on Odysseus' self. _Odysseus! Odysseus!_
Come thou from the shades and smite this Paris, this trickster, who even
in death finds ways to mock thee."

She ceased, and with eyes upturned and arms outstretched murmured,
"Odysseus! Odysseus! Come."

Slowly the Wanderer drew near to the glory of the Golden Helen--slowly,
slowly he came, till his dark eyes looked into her eyes of blue. Then at
last he found his voice and spake.

"Helen! Argive Helen!" he said, "I am no shadow come up from Hell to
torment thee, and of Trojan Paris I know nothing. For I am Odysseus,
Odysseus of Ithaca, a living man beneath the sunlight. Hither am I come
to see thee, hither I am come to win thee to my heart. For yonder in
Ithaca Aphrodite visited me in a dream, and bade me wander out upon the
seas till at length I found thee, Helen, and saw the Red Star blaze upon
thy breast. And I have wandered, and I have dared, and I have heard thy
song, and rent the web of Fate, and I have seen the Star, and lo! at
last, at last! I find thee. Well I saw thou knewest the arms of Paris,
who was thy husband, and to try thee I spoke with the voice of Paris,
as of old thou didst feign the voices of our wives when we lay in the
wooden horse within the walls of Troy. Thus I drew the sweetness of thy
love from thy secret breast, as the sun draws out the sweetness of the
flowers. But now I declare myself to be Odysseus, clad in the mail of
Paris--Odysseus come on this last journey to be thy love and lord." And
he ceased.

She trembled and looked at him doubtfully, but at last she spoke:

"Well do I remember," she said, "that when I washed the limbs of
Odysseus, in the halls of Ilios, I marked a great white scar beneath his
knee. If indeed thou art Odysseus, and not a phantom from the Gods, show
me that great scar."

Then the Wanderer smiled, and, resting his buckler against the pillar
of the loom, drew off his golden greave, and there was the scar that the
boar dealt with his tusk on the Parnassian hill when Odysseus was a boy.

"Look, Lady," he said; "is this the scar that once thine eyes looked on
in the halls of Troy?"

"Yea," she said, "it is the very scar, and now I know that thou art no
ghost and no lying shape, but Odysseus' self, come to be my love and
lord," and she loo