y. "Oh,
comply!" it said. "Think of his misery; think of his danger--look at his
state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the
recklessness following on despair--soothe him; save him; love him; tell
him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for _you_? or
who will be injured by what you do?"

Still indomitable was the reply--"_I_ care for myself. The more
solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will
respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I
will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not
mad--as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there
is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul
rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they
shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would
be their worth? They have a worth--so I have always believed; and if I
cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane--quite insane: with my
veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its
throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have
at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot."

I did. Mr. Rochester, reading my countenance, saw I had done so. His
fury was wrought to the highest: he must yield to it for a moment,
whatever followed; he crossed the floor and seized my arm and grasped my
waist. He seemed to devour me with his flaming glance: physically, I
felt, at the moment, powerless as stubble exposed to the draught and glow
of a furnace: mentally, I still possessed my soul, and with it the
certainty of ultimate safety. The soul, fortunately, has an
interpreter--often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter--in
the eye. My eye rose to his; and while I looked in his fierce face I
gave an involuntary sigh; his gripe was painful, and my over-taxed
strength almost exhausted.

"Never," said he, as he ground his teeth, "never was anything at once so
frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!" (And he
shook me with the force of his hold.) "I could bend her with my finger
and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed
her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking
out of it, defying me, with more than courage--with a stern triumph.
Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it--the savage, beautiful