Her inborn truth and nature draw her on as by a quiet momentum, and gradually liberate her from the sway of the hollow fictions among which her lot is cast.

Valence, the outward instrument of this liberation, is not the least noble of that line of chivalrous lovers which reaches from Gismond to Caponsacchi.

With great delicacy the steps are marked in this inward and spiritual "flight" of Colombe.

Valence's "way of love" is to make her realise the glory and privileges of the rulership which places her beyond his reach, at the very moment when she is about to resign it in despair.

She discovers the needs of the woman and the possibilities of power at the same time, and thus is brought, by Valence's means, to a mood in which Prince Berthold's offer of his hand and crown together weighs formidably, for a moment, against Valence's offer of his love alone, until she discovers that Berthold is the very personation, in love and in statecraft alike, of the fictions from which she had escaped.