ane, 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?"

"I do."

"And now?" softly kissing my forehead and cheek.

"I do," extricating myself from restraint rapidly and completely.

"Oh, Jane, this is bitter! This--this is wicked. It would not be wicked
to love me."

"It would to obey you."

A wild look raised his brows--crossed his features: he rose; but he
forebore yet. I laid my hand on the back of a chair for support: I
shook, I feared--but I resolved.

"One instant, Jane. Give one glance to my horrible life when you are
gone. All happiness will be torn away with you. What then is left? For
a wife I have but the maniac upstairs: as well might you refer me to some
corpse in yonder churchyard. What shall I do, Jane? Where turn for a
companion and for some hope?"

"Do as I do: trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope to meet
again there."

"Then you will not yield?"

"No."

"Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed?" His voice
rose.

"I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to die tranquil."

"Then you snatch love and innocence from me? You fling me back on lust
for a passion--vice for an occupation?"

"Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for
myself. We were born to strive and endure--you as well as I: do so. You
will forget me before I forget you."

"You make me a liar by such language: you sully my honour. I declared I
could not change: you tell me to my face I shall change soon. And what a
distortion in your judgment, what a perversity in your ideas, is proved
by your conduct! Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than
to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach? for
you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend
by living with me?"

This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned
traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They
spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildl