im. "There, there, both deaths presently"--and in the
dying, each is again revealed. He, all self--

"_My_ brain is drowned now--quite drowned: all _I_ feel"

--and so on; while her sole utterance is--

"Not me--to him, O God, be merciful!"

Pippa's song has, doubtlessly, saved them both, but Sebald as by direct
intervention, Ottima as by the revelation of her truest self. Again, and
yet again and again, we shall find in Browning this passion for "the
courage of the deed"; and we shall find that courage oftenest assigned
to women. For him, it was wellnigh the cardinal virtue to be brave--not
always, as in Ottima, by the help of a native callousness, but assuredly
always, as in her and in the far dearer women, by the help of an
instinctive love for truth--

"Truth is the strong thing--let man's life be true!"

Ottima's and Sebald's lives have not been "true"; but she, who can
accept the retribution and feel no faintest impulse to blame and wound
her lover--_she_ can rise, must rise, to heights forbidden the lame
wings of him who, in his anguish, can turn and strike the
fellow-creature who has but partnered him in sin. Only Pippa, passing,
could in that hour save Sebald; but by the tenderness which underlay her
fierce and lustful passion, and which, in any later relation, some other
need of the man must infallibly have called forth, Ottima would, I
believe, without Pippa have saved herself. _Direct intervention_: not
every soul needs that. And--whether it be intentional or not, I feel
unable to decide, nor does it lose, but rather gain, in interest, if it
be unintentional--one of the most remarkable things in this remarkable
artistic experiment, this drama in which the scenes "have in common only
the appearance of one figure," is that by each of the Four Passings of
Pippa, a man's is the soul rescued.

III. NOON: PHENE

A group of art-students is assembled at Orcana, opposite the house of
Jules, a young French sculptor, who to-day at noon brings home his
bride--that second Happiest One, the pale and shrouded beauty whom Pippa
had seen alight at Asolo, and had envied for her immaculate girlhood.
Very eagerly the youths are awaiting this arrival; there are seven,
including Schramm, the pipe-smoking mystic, and Gottlieb, a new-comer to
the group, who hears the reason for their excitement, and
tender-hearted and imaginative as he is, provides the human element amid
the theorising of Schramm, the flip