e tractability with which, at my wish,
you forsook a study in which you were interested, and adopted another
because it interested me; in the untiring assiduity with which you have
since persevered in it--in the unflagging energy and unshaken temper with
which you have met its difficulties--I acknowledge the complement of the
qualities I seek. Jane, you are docile, diligent, disinterested,
faithful, constant, and courageous; very gentle, and very heroic: cease
to mistrust yourself--I can trust you unreservedly. As a conductress of
Indian schools, and a helper amongst Indian women, your assistance will
be to me invaluable."

My iron shroud contracted round me; persuasion advanced with slow sure
step. Shut my eyes as I would, these last words of his succeeded in
making the way, which had seemed blocked up, comparatively clear. My
work, which had appeared so vague, so hopelessly diffuse, condensed
itself as he proceeded, and assumed a definite form under his shaping
hand. He waited for an answer. I demanded a quarter of an hour to
think, before I again hazarded a reply.

"Very willingly," he rejoined; and rising, he strode a little distance up
the pass, threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay still.

{He threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay still:
p389.jpg}

"I _can_ do what he wants me to do: I am forced to see and acknowledge
that," I meditated,--"that is, if life be spared me. But I feel mine is
not the existence to be long protracted under an Indian sun. What then?
He does not care for that: when my time came to die, he would resign me,
in all serenity and sanctity, to the God who gave me. The case is very
plain before me. In leaving England, I should leave a loved but empty
land--Mr. Rochester is not there; and if he were, what is, what can that
ever be to me? My business is to live without him now: nothing so
absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting some
impossible change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him. Of
course (as St. John once said) I must seek another interest in life to
replace the one lost: is not the occupation he now offers me truly the
most glorious man can adopt or God assign? Is it not, by its noble cares
and sublime results, the one best calculated to fill the void left by
uptorn affections and demolished hopes? I believe I must say, Yes--and
yet I shudder. Alas! If I join St. John, I abandon half myself: if I g