‘Don’t talk any more of those days, sir,’ I interrupted, furtively dashing away some tears from my eyes; his language was torture to me; for I knew what I must do—and do soon—and all these reminiscences, and these revelations of his feelings only made my work more difficult.
‘No, Jane,’ he returned: ‘what necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer—the Future so much brighter?’
I shuddered to hear the infatuated assertion. ‘You see now how the case stands—do you not?’ he continued. ‘After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the f irst time found what I can truly love—I have found you. You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you, and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.
‘It was because I felt and knew this, that I resolved to marry you. To tell me that I had already a wife is empty mockery: you know now that I had but a hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I feared a stubbornness that exists in your character. I feared early instilled prejudice: I wanted to have you safe before hazarding confidences. This was cowardly: I should have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first, as I do now—opened to you plainly my life of agony—described to you my hunger and thirst after a higher and worthier existence—shown to you, not my RESOLUTION (that word is weak), but my resistless BENT to love faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and well loved in return. Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge of fidelity and to give me yours. Jane—give it me now.’
A pause.
‘Why are you silent, Jane?’
I was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals. Terrible moment: full of struggle, blackness, burning! Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved; and him who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped: and I must renounce love and idol. One drear word comprised my intolerable duty—‘Depart!’
‘Jane, you understand what I want of you? Just this promise—
‘I will be yours, Mr. Rochester.’’ ‘Mr. Rochester, I will NOT be yours.’
Another long silence. ‘Jane!’ recommenced he, with a gentleness that broke me down with grief, and turned me stone-cold with ominous terror—for this still voice was the pant of a lion rising—
‘Jane, do you mean to go one way in the world, and to let me go another?’
‘I do.’
‘Jane’ (bending towards and embracing me),
‘do you mean it now?’
