Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things.
The honest thief, the tender murderer,
The superstitious atheist, demirep
That loves and saves her soul in new French books.

Browning’s lines point to a recurring fascination in his work: moral complexity and the allure of contradiction. “Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things” suggests that attention and sympathy are drawn not to tidy virtue but to borderline cases where categories blur. The subsequent oxymorons—“honest thief,” “tender murderer,” “superstitious atheist”—catalog figures whose mixed motives unsettle conventional judgment. The “demirep” (a woman of compromised reputation) who “loves and saves her soul in new French books” adds a satiric note about fashionable, possibly suspect, modern influences being used for self-justification or redemption. Overall, the passage probes how people rationalize themselves and how observers are captivated by transgressive, paradoxical lives.