ving told the truth of
the matter to the Queen, looks at both women, and cries out, "You two
glare, each at each, like panthers now." A woman, filled with the joy
and sadness of pure self-sacrifice, would not have felt at this moment
like a panther towards the woman for whom she had sacrificed herself.

Even as a study of jealousy, Constance is too subtle. Jealousy has none
of these labyrinthine methods; it goes straight with fiery passion to
its end. It may be said, then, that Constance is not a study of
jealousy. But it may be a study by Browning of what he thought in his
intellect jealousy would be. At any rate, Constance, as a study of
self-sacrifice, is a miserable failure. Moreover, it does not make much
matter whether she is a study of this or that, because she is eminently
wrong-natured. Her lying is unendurable, only to be explained or excused
by the madness of jealousy, and she, though jealous, is not maddened
enough by jealousy to excuse her lies. The situations she causes are
almost too ugly. Whenever the truth is told, either by the Queen or
Norbert, the situations break up in disgrace for her. It is difficult
to imagine how Norbert could go on loving her. His love would have
departed if they had come to live together. He is radically true, and
she is radically false. A fatal split would have been inevitable.
Nothing could be better for them both--after their momentary outburst of
love at the end--than death.

From the point of view of art, Constance is interesting. It is more than
we can say of Domizia in _Luria_. She is nothing more than a passing
study whom Browning uses to voice his theories. Eulalia in _A Soul's
Tragedy_ is also a transient thing, only she is more colourless, more a
phantom than Domizia.

By this time, by the year 1846, Browning had found out that he could not
write dramas well, or even such dramatic proverbs as _In a Balcony_. And
he gave himself up to another species of his art. The women he now draws
(some of which belong to the years during which he wrote dramas) are
done separately, in dramatic lyrics as he called them, and in narrative
and philosophical poems. Some are touched only at moments of their
lives, and we are to infer from the momentary action and feeling the
whole of the woman. Others are carefully and lovingly drawn from point
to point in a variety of action, passion and circumstance. In these we
find Browning at his best in the drawing of women. I know no women amo