(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!'"

"Gone once, and gone for ever." True, when the grace _is_ gone; but
surely not from her, in any real sense, had it gone--and would she not,
in the deep knowledge of herself which comes with revelation to the
world, have felt that passionately? There are accusations of ourselves
which indeed arraign ourselves, yet leave us our best pride. To me, not
the error which made her prey to penitence was Mildred Tresham's
"fall," but those crude cries of shame.

We take refuge in her immaturity, and in the blighting influence of her
brother--that prig of prigs, that "monomaniac of family pride and
conventional morality,"[90:1] Thorold, Earl Tresham; but not thus can we
solace ourselves for Browning's failure. What a girl he might have given
us in Mildred, had he listened only to himself! But, not yet in full
possession of that self, he set up as an ideal the ideal of others,
trying dutifully to see it as they see it, denying dutifully his deepest
instinct; and, thus apostate, piled insincerity on insincerity, until at
last no truth is anywhere, and we read on with growing alienation as
each figure loses all of such reality as it ever had, and even
Gwendolen, the "golden creature"--his own dauntless, individual woman,
seeing and feeling truly through every fibre of her being--is lost amid
the fog, is stifled in the stifling atmosphere, and only at the last,
when Mildred and her brother are both dead, can once more say the word
which lights us back to truth:

"Ah, Thorold, we can but--remember you!"

It was indeed all _they_ could do; but we, more fortunate, can forget
him, imaging to ourselves the Mildred that Browning could have given
us--the Mildred of whom her brother is made to say:

"You cannot know the good and tender heart,
Its girl's trust and its woman's constancy,
How pure yet passionate, how calm yet kind,
How grave yet joyous, how reserved yet free
As light where friends are