_She_ is better off; she has committed a fault and has done . . . now she can begin again. But most likely she does not repent at all, he goes on to reflect--most likely she is glad she deceived him. She had endured too long:-- "[You] have done no evil and want no aid, Will live the old life out and chance the new. And your sentence is written all the same, And I can do nothing--pray, perhaps: But somehow the word pursues its game-- If I pray, if I curse--for better or worse: And my faith is torn to a thousand scraps, And my heart feels ice while my words breathe flame. Dear, I look from my hiding-place. Are you still so fair? Have you still the eyes? Be happy! Add but the other grace, Be good! Why want what the angels vaunt? I knew you once: but in Paradise, If we meet, I will pass nor turn my face." I think the saddest thing in this poem is its last stanza; for we feel, do we not? that _now_ she is having her first opportunity to be both happy and good--free from the intolerable magnanimity of this husband. And so, by making a male utterance too "noble," Browning has almost redressed the balance. The tear had been too frequently assigned to woman; exultation too often had sounded from man. We have seen that many of the feminine "tears" were supererogatory; and now, in this chapter of the Woman Won, we see that she can tap the source of those salt drops in man. But not in _James Lee's Wife_ is the top-note of magnanimity more strained than in _The Worst of It_. Moral gymnastics should not be practised at the expense of others. No one knew that better than Browning, but too often he allowed his subtle intellect to confute his warm, wise heart--too often he fell to the lure of "situation," and forgot the truth. "A man and woman _might_ feel so," he sometimes seems to have said; "it does not matter that no man and woman ever have so felt." And thus, now and then, he gave both men and women--the worst of it. But oftener he gave them such a best of it that I hardly can imagine a reader of Browning who has not love and courage in the heart, and trust and looking-forward in the soul; who does not, in the words of the great Epilogue:-- "Greet the unseen with a cheer." FOOTNOTES: [308:1] Compare this passage with one in a letter to E. B. B.: "In this House of Life, where I go, you go--when I ascend, you run before--when I descend, it is after you." THE END Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. at Paul's Work, Edinburgh Transcriber's Notes: This text uses a unique type of ellipsis to represent where material has been left out of poetry quotations and out of the story line of a poem. They are indicated here by five asterisks: * * * * * The number of periods in ellipses match the original. Thought breaks in the text are indicated by the following: + + + + +