The conflict between policy and devotion is now transferred to the arena of a single breast, where its nature is somewhat too clearly understood and formulated.  The “Frank schemer” conceives the plan of turning the Druse superstition to account by posing as an incarnation of their Founder.  But the “Arab mystic” is too near sharing the belief to act his part with ease, and while he is still paltering the devoted Anael slays the Prefect.  The play is thenceforth occupied, ostensibly, with the efforts of the Christian authorities to discover and punish the murderers.  Its real subject is the subtle changes wrought in Djabal and Anael by their gradual transition from the relation of prophet and devotee to that of lovers.  Her passion, even before he comes to share it, has begun to sap the security of his false pretensions:  he longs, not at first to disavow them, but to make them true:  he will be the prophetic helper of his people in very deed.  To the outer world he maintains his claim with undiminished boldness and complete success; but the inner supports are gradually giving way, Arab mystic and Frank schemer lose their hold, and

     “A third and better nature rises up,
      My mere man’s nature.”

Anael, a simpler character than any previous woman of the plays, thus has a more significant function.  Lady Carlisle fumbles blindly with the dramatic issues without essentially affecting them; Polyxena furthers them with loyal counsel, but is not their main executant.  Anael, in her fervid devotion, not only precipitates the catastrophe, but emancipates her lover from the thraldom of his lower nature.  In her Browning for the first time in drama represented the purifying power of Love.  The transformations of soul by soul were already beginning to occupy Browning’s imagination.  The poet of Cristina and Saul was already foreshadowed.  But nothing as yet foreshadowed the kind of spiritual influence there portrayed—­that which, instead of making its way through the impact of character upon character, passion upon passion, is communicated through an unconscious glance or a song.  For one who believed as fixedly as Browning in the power of these moments to change the prevailing bias of character and conduct, such a conception was full of implicit drama.  A chance inspiration led him to attempt to show how a lyric soul flinging its soul-seed unconsciously forth in song might become the involuntary deus ex machina in the tangle of passion and plot through which she moved, resolving its problems and averting its catastrophes.

The result was a poem which Elizabeth Barrett “could find it in her heart to envy” its author, which Browning himself (in 1845) liked better than anything else he had yet done.[17] It has won a not less secure place in the affections of all who care for Browning at all.  It was while walking alone in a wood near Dulwich, we are told by Mrs Orr, that “the idea flashed upon him of some one walking thus through