But the drawing of the woman's character suffers more from this than the man's, even though Tresham, in the last scene, is half turned into a woman.

Sex seems to disappear in that scene.
A different person is Colombe, the Duchess in _Colombe's Birthday_.

That play, as I have said, gets on, but it gets on because Colombe moves every one in the play by her own motion.

From beginning to end of the action she is the fire and the soul of it.

Innocent, frank and brave, simple and constant among a group of false and worldly courtiers, among whom she moves like the white Truth, untouched as yet by love or by the fates of her position, she is suddenly thrown into a whirlpool of affairs and of love; and her simplicity, clearness of intelligence, unconscious rightness of momentary feeling, which comes of her not thinking about her feelings--that rare and precious element in character--above all, her belief in love as the one worthy thing in the world, bring her out of the whirlpool, unshipwrecked, unstained by a single wave of ill-feeling or mean thinking, into a quiet harbour of affection and of power.