Perhaps the most remarkable and most obvious example of this suspended psychology is to be found in _The Ring and the Book_. Take the canto in which Giuseppe Caponsacchi relates to the judges his share in the tangled story. It is clear that the interest here is not primarily in the event itself, nor does it lie in that phase of the speaker's character which would be revealed by his confession before such a court as he is supposed to confront. The fact is, that Caponsacchi's language is not such as under the circumstances he could possibly be conceived to use. As the situation forms itself in my mind, he might be in his cell awaiting the summons to appear. In that solitude and uncertainty he goes over in memory the days in Arezzo, when the temptation first came to him, and once more takes the perilous ride with Pompilia to Rome. He lives again through the great crisis, dissecting all his motives, balancing the pros and cons of each step; yet all the time he has in mind the opinion of the world as personified in the judges he is to face. The psychology is suspended dexterously between self-examination and open confession, and the reader who accepts the actual dramatic situation as suggested by Browning loses the finest and subtlest savour of the speech. In many places it would be simply preposterous to suppose we are listening to words really uttered by the priest. We did go on all night; but at its close She was troubled, restless, moaned low, talked at whiles To herself, her brow on quiver with the dream: Once, wide awake, she menaced, at arms' length Waved away something--"Never again with you! My soul is mine, my body is my soul's: You and I are divided ever more In soul and body: get you gone!" Then I-- "Why, in my whole life I have never prayed! Oh, if the God, that only can, would help! Am I his priest with power to cast out fiends? Let God arise and all his enemies Be scattered!" By morn, there was peace, no sigh Out of the deep sleep-- no, those words were never spoken in the ears of a sceptical, worldly tribunal; they belong to the most sacred recesses of memory; yet at the same time that memory is coloured by a consciousness of the world's clumsy judgment.