A "lavish soul" long starved, but kindling into the ecstasy of girlhood at the seeming touch of love; then, as her dream is shattered by the indignant honesty of Norbert, transmuted at once into the daemonic Gudrun or Brynhild, glaring in speechless white-heat and implacable frenzy upon the man who has scorned her proffered heart and the hapless girl he has chosen.[38] Between these powerful, rigid, and simple natures stands Constance, ardent as they, but with the lithe and palpitating ardour of a flame.

She is concentrated Romance.

Her love is an intense emotion; but some of its fascination lies in its secrecy,-- "Complots inscrutable, deep telegraphs, Long-planned chance meetings, hazards of a look"; she shrinks from a confession which "at the best" will deprive their love of its spice of danger and make them even as their "five hundred openly happy friends." She loves adventure, ruse, and stratagem for their own sake.

But she is also romantically generous, and because she "owes this withered woman everything," is eager to sacrifice her own hopes of happiness.
[Footnote 38: An anecdote to which Prof.Dowden has lately called attention (_Browning_, p.

66) describes Browning in his last years as demurring to the current interpretation of the _denoument_.