Rashness of wrath and pride begin it; Mertoun is slain by Tresham as he climbs to Mildred's window, though why he should risk her honour any more when she is affianced to him is another of Browning's maddening improbabilities.

And then wrath and pride pass away, and sorrow and love and the joy of death are woven together in beauty.

If we must go through the previous acts to get to this, we forgive, for its sake, their wrongness.

It has turns of love made exquisitely fair by inevitable death, unfathomable depths of feeling.

We touch in these last scenes the sacred love beyond the world in which forgiveness is forgotten.
* * * * * _Colombe's Birthday_ is of all these plays the nearest to a true drama.
It has been represented in America as well as in England, and its skilful characterisation of Valence, Colombe, and Berthold has won deserved praise; but it could not hold the stage.