I confess that I cannot follow this analogy. The lesson may be clear--of that later; the analogy escapes me. Who says that rocks are of lower nature than the sea which washes them? But if it does not mean this, what does it mean? Mrs. Orr interprets thus: "As earth blesses her smallest creatures with her smile, so should love devote itself to those less worthy beings who may be ennobled by it." That seems to me to touch this instance not at all. It is the earth who has set "himself" (in the unusual personification) to bask in the sun; the earth, _here_, is getting, not giving. Or rather, all is one: each element wholly joys in the other. And watching this, the woman wrings from it "the doctrine simple, ancient, true," that love is self-sacrifice. Let that be true, I still cannot see how the symbol aids the doctrine. And the doctrine? Grant that love is self-sacrifice (I had rather say that self-sacrifice is a part, and but a part, of love): is love also self-sufficiency? "Make the low nature better by your throes." It is a strange love, surely, which so speaks? Shall a man live, despised, in harmony with her who despises him? James Lee's wife may call this love, but we absolve James Lee, I think, if he does not! For human beings feel most subtly when scorn dwells near them; they may indeed have caused that scorn--but let there be no talk of love where it subsists. Even bitterness were less destructive to the woman's hope than this strange counting of the cost, this self-sufficiency. Our sympathy must leave her at this phase; and sympathy for her was surely Browning's aim? But possibly it was not; and _if_ not, this indeed is subtle. VIII.--BESIDE THE DRAWING-BOARD She had turned wearily from the household cares, the daily direction of a little peasant-servant, to her drawing-board. A cast from Leonardo da Vinci of a woman's hand is her model, and for an hour she has been happily working. She has failed; but that has not clouded joy nor damped ardour. "Its beauty mounted into my brain," and, effacing the failures, she has yielded to a fancy--has taken the chalk between her lips, instead of her fingers: "With soul to help if the mere lips failed, I kissed all right where the drawing ailed, Kissed fast the grace that somehow slips Still from one's soulless finger-tips." This hand was that of a worshipped woman. Her fancy sets the ring on it, by which one knows "That here at length a master found His match, a proud lone soul its mate." Not even Da Vinci's pencil had been able to trace all the beauty-- ". . . how free, how fine To fear almost!--of the limit-line."