“You are like Ulysses,” she said. “The gods, or rather the goddesses, have helped you towards immortality.”
“It is,” Mr. Sabin answered, “the most delicious piece of flattery I have ever heard.”
“Calypso,” she murmured, nodding towards Lucille, “is by your side.”
“Really,” Mr. Sabin interrupted, “I must protest. Lucille and I were married by a most respectable Episcopalian clergyman. We have documentary evidence. Besides, if Lucille is Calypso, what about Penelope?”
Lady Carey smiled thoughtfully.
“I have always thought,” she said, “that Penelope was a myth. In your case I should say that Penelope represents a return to sanity—to the ordinary ways of life.”
Mr. Sabin and Lucille exchanged swift glances. He raised his eyebrows.
“Our little idyll,” he said, “seems to be the sport and buffet of every one. You forget that I am of the old world. I do not understand modernity.”
“Ulysses,” she answered, “was of the old world, yet he was a wanderer in more senses of the word than one. And there have been times—”
Her eyes sought his. He ignored absolutely the subtlety of meaning which lurked beneath the heavy drooping eyelids.