alf a dozen words to indicate _her_ lot:

"Here comes my husband from his whist."

What is "the truth of that"?

Again, I think, something of what I said in writing of _Youth and Art_:
again not quite what Browning seems to wish us to accept. Love is the
fulfilling of the law--with all my heart; but was love here? Does love
weigh worth, as the poet did? does love marry the next comer, as the
lady did? Mrs. Orr, devouter votary than I, explains that Browning meant
"that everything which disturbs the equal balance of human life gives a
vital impulse to the soul." Did one wish merely to be humorous, one
might say that this was the most optimistic view of unsuccessful
marriage which has yet found expression! But merely to be humorous is
not what I wish: we must consider this belief, which Mrs. Orr further
declares to be the expression of Browning's "poetic self." Assuredly it
is true that stereotyped monotony, even if happy, does leave the soul
unstirred to deepest depth. We may hesitate, nevertheless, to embrace
the view that "only our mistakes are our experience"; and this is the
view which seems to prevail in Mrs. Orr's interpretation of _Dis Aliter
Visum_. Mr. Symons says that the woman points out to the man "his fatal
mistake." . . . But was it really a mistake at all? I do not, in urging
that question, commit myself to the crass commonplace of Berdoe, who
argues that "a more unreasonable match could hardly be imagined than
this one would have been"! The "match" standpoint is not here our
standpoint. _That_ is, simply, that love is the fulfilling of the law,
and that these two people did not love. They were in the sentimental
state which frequently results from pleasant chance encounters--and the
experienced, subtle man of the world was able to perceive that, and to
act upon it. That he has pursued his wonted way of life, and that she
has married lovelessly (for a husband who plays whist is, by the
unwritten law of romance, a husband who can by no possibility be
loved!), proves merely that each has fallen away in the pursuit of any
ideal which may then have urged itself--not that both would certainly
have "saved their souls" if they had married one another. Speaking
elsewhere in this book of Browning's theory of love, I said: "Love can
do all, and will do all, but we must for our part be doing something
too"--but even love can do nothing if it is not there! Ideals need not
be abandoned because they are not full-