". . . Thorold, do you devise Fit expiation for my guilt, if fit There be! 'Tis nought to say that I'll endure And bless you--that my spirit yearns to purge Her stains off in the fierce renewing fire: But do not plunge me into other guilt! Oh, guilt enough . . ." She of course refuses the name. He tells her to pronounce, then, her own punishment. Again her answer, in the utter falseness to all truth of its abasement, well-nigh sickens the soul: "Oh, Thorold, you must never tempt me thus! To die here in this chamber, by that sword, Would seem like punishment; so should I glide Like an arch-cheat, into extremest bliss!" Comment upon that seems to me simply impossible. This is the woman to whom, but a page or two back, young Mertoun has sung the exquisite song, known to most readers of Browning's lyrics: "There's a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer than the purest, And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith's the surest" . . . Already in that hour with her, Mertoun must have learnt that some of those high words were turned to slighter uses when they sang of Mildred Tresham. In that hour he has spoken of the "meeting that appalled us both" (namely, the meeting with her brother, when he was to ask for her hand), saying that it is over and happiness begins, "such as the world contains not." When Mildred answers him with, "This will not be," we could accept, believingly, were only the sense of doom what her reply brought with it. But "this will not be," because they do not "deserve the whole world's best of blisses." "Sin has surprised us, so will punishment." And how strange, how sad for a woman is it, to see with what truth and courage Browning can make Mertoun speak! Each word that _he_ says can be brave and clear for all its recognition of their error; no word that _she_ says. . . . Her creator does not understand her; almost, thus, we do feel Mildred to be real, so quick is our resentment of the unrealities heaped on her. Imagining beforehand the moment when she shall receive in presence of them all "the partner of my guilty love" (is not here the theatre in full blast?), the deception she must practise--called by her, in the vein so cruelly assigned her, "this planned piece of deliberate wickedness" . . . imagining all this, she foresees herself unable to pretend, pouring forth "all our woeful story," and pictures them aghast, "as round some cursed fount that should spirt water and spouts blood." . . . "I'll not!" she cries-- ". . . 'I'll not affect a grace That's gone from me--gone once, and gone for ever!'"