in the converse way. Supposing he could "fade to a thing
like her," with the coarse hair and skin . . .

"You might turn myself!--should I know or care
When I should be dead of joy, James Lee?"

Either way it would kill her, so she may as well be gone, with her

"Love that was life, life that was love";

and there is nothing at all to remember in her. As long as she lives
his words and looks will circle round _her_ memory. If she could fancy
one touch of love for her once coming in those words and looks
again. . . . But the boat moves on, farther, ever farther from the
little house with its four rooms and its field and fig-tree and
vines--from the window, the fireside, the doorway, from the beach and
cliff and rocks. All the formulas have failed but this one. This one
will not fail. He is set free.

+ + + + +

She had to go; and neither him nor her can we condemn. "One near one is
too far." She saw and loved too well: one or the other she should have
been wise enough to hide from him. But she could not. Character is fate;
and two characters are two fates. Neither, with that other, could be
different; each might, with another "other," have been all that each was
meant to be.

FOOTNOTES:

[251:1] The poems were first called _James Lee_ only.

[254:1] _Life_, Mrs. Orr, p. 266.

[257:1] "The little church, a field, a few houses, and the sea . . .
Such a soft sea, and such a mournful wind!"--_Life_, p. 266.

[258:1] _Life_, p. 266.

[262:1] These lines were published by Browning, separately, in 1836,
when he was twenty-six. _James Lee's Wife_ was published in 1864.

[263:1] Nettleship well says: "The difference between the first and
second parts of this section is that, while the plaint of the wind was
enough to make Browning write in 1836, he must have the plaint of a soul
in 1863. . . . And yet, something is lost."

PART V

[Illustration: THE TROUBLE OF LOVE]

TROUBLE OF LOVE: THE MAN'S

I

THE WOMAN UNWON

In the section entitled "Lovers Meeting" we saw the exultant mood of
love in man, and I there pointed out how seldom even Browning has
assigned that mood to woman. But he does not show her as alone in
suffering love's pain. The lyrics we are now to consider give us woman
as the maker of love's pain for man; we learn her in this character
through the utterances of men--and these are noble utterances, every
one. Mr. J. T. Nettleship, i