Anael, of _The Return of the Druses_, is pure and measureless devotion.

The cry of "Hakeem!" as she falls, is not an act of faith but of love; it pierces through the shadow of the material falsehood to her one illuminated truth of absolute love, like that other falsehood which sanctifies the dying lips of Desdemona.

The sin of Mildred is the very innocence of sin, and does not really alter the simplicity of her character; it is only the girlish rapture of giving, with no limitation, whatever may prove a bounty to him whom she loves:-- Come what, come will, You have been happy.
The remorse of Mildred is the remorse of innocence, the anguish of one wholly unlearned in the dark colours of guilt.

This tragedy of Mildred and Mertoun is the _Romeo and Juliet_ of Browning's cycle of dramas.

But Mildred's cousin Guendolen, by virtue of her swift, womanly penetration and her brave protectiveness of distressed girlhood, is a kinswoman of Beatrice who supported the injured daughter of Leonato in a comedy of Shakespeare which rings with laughter.
Polyxena, the Queen of Sardinia--a daughter not of Italy but of the Rhineland--is, in her degree, an eighteenth century representative of the woman of the ancient Teutonic tribes, grave, resolute, wise, and possessing the authority of wisdom.