But, then, we ask, how Alkestis, having found him fail, will live with him again, how she, having topped nobility, will endure the memory of the ignoble in him? That would be the interesting subject, and the explanation Euripides suggests does not satisfy Balaustion. The dramatic situation is unfinished. Balaustion, with her fine instinct, feels that, to save the subject, it ought to be otherwise treated, and she invents a new Admetos, a new Alkestis. She has heard that Sophocles meant to make a new piece of the same matter, and her balanced judgment, on which Browning insists so often, makes her say, "That is well. One thing has many sides; but still, no good supplants a good, no beauty undoes another; still I will love the _Alkestis_ which I know. Yet I have so drunk this poem, so satisfied with it my heart and soul, that I feel as if I, too, might make a new poem on the same matter." Ah, that brave Bounty of poets, the one royal race That ever was, or will be, in this world! They give no gift that bounds itself and ends I' the giving and the taking: theirs so breeds I' the heart and soul o' the taker, so transmutes The man who only was a man before, That he grows godlike in his turn, can give-- He also: share the poet's privilege, Bring forth new good, new beauty, from the old. And she gives her conception of the subject, and it further unfolds her character. When Apollo served Admetos, the noble nature of the God so entered into him that all the beast was subdued in the man, and he became the ideal king, living for the ennoblement of his people. Yet, while doing this great work, he is to die, still young, and he breaks out, in a bitter calm, against the fate which takes him from the work of his life. "Not so," answers Alkestis, "I knew what was coming, and though Apollo urged me not to disturb the course of things, and not to think that any death prevents the march of good or ends a life, yet he yielded; and I die for you--all happiness." "It shall never be," replies Admetos; "our two lives are one. But I am the body, thou art the soul; and the body shall go, and not the soul. I claim death."