For we have tokens that from all men else
Are hidden, and none know but only we.”[[7]]
Truly, it is Greek meeting Greek, in this encounter between the wit of Penelope and that of the man she dare not hope is really her husband. Odysseus grows angry at last, and that gives the victory to his wife. For when he orders that a bed shall be made for him apart, she says cunningly to the maid:
“Now, Eurycleia, lay the goodly bed
Without the chamber firmly-stablished
That his own hands made: take it out from thence,
You and the women, and upon it spread
The broidered blankets, that he soft may lie,
And rugs and fleeces.“[[7]]
Now Odysseus had built the bed himself, literally round the trunk of a standing tree; and by this token she is trying him. In his answer she perceives that he truly is her husband, for none but he could know how wonderfully their bed was built.