She had to go; and neither him nor her can we condemn. "One near one is too far." She saw and loved too well: one or the other she should have been wise enough to hide from him. But she could not. Character is fate; and two characters are two fates. Neither, with that other, could be different; each might, with another "other," have been all that each was meant to be.
FOOTNOTES:
[251:1] The poems were first called James Lee only.
[254:1] Life, Mrs. Orr, p. 266.
[257:1] "The little church, a field, a few houses, and the sea . . . Such a soft sea, and such a mournful wind!"—Life, p. 266.
[258:1] Life, p. 266.
[262:1] These lines were published by Browning, separately, in 1836, when he was twenty-six. James Lee's Wife was published in 1864.
[263:1] Nettleship well says: "The difference between the first and second parts of this section is that, while the plaint of the wind was enough to make Browning write in 1836, he must have the plaint of a soul in 1863. . . . And yet, something is lost."