does for one second attain to authenticity--is the question: "What
is this for?" He, after some hesitation, tells her what he knows, calls
upon her to confess, she standing silent until, at end of the
arraignment, he demands the lover's name. Listen to her answer:

". . . 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"