h--which I do not like to trust to a letter, but which one day
perhaps, or rather one evening--if ever we should find ourselves by the
fireside at Haworth or Brookroyd, with our feet on the fender curling
our hair--I may communicate to you."

Charlotte is now aware of a situation; she is interested in it,
intellectually, not emotionally.

In November: "Twinges of homesickness cut me to the heart, now and
then." On holidays "the silence and loneliness of all the house weighs
down one's spirits like lead.... Madame Heger, good and kind as I have
described her" (_i.e._ for all her goodness and kindness), "never comes
near me on these occasions." ... "She is not colder to me than she is to
the other teachers, but they are less dependent on her than I am." But
the situation is becoming clearer. Charlotte is interested. "I fancy I
begin to perceive the reason of this mighty distance and reserve; it
sometimes makes me laugh, and at other times nearly cry. When I am sure
of it I will tell you."

There can be no doubt that before she left Brussels Charlotte was sure;
but there is no record of her ever having told.

The evidence from the letters is plain enough. But the first thing that
the theorist does is to mutilate letters. He suppresses all those parts
of a correspondence which tell against his theory. When these torn and
bleeding passages are restored piously to their contexts they are
destructive to the legend of tragic passion. They show (as Mr. Clement
Shorter has pointed out) that throughout her last year at Brussels
Charlotte Bronte saw hardly anything of M. Heger. They also show that
before very long Charlotte had a shrewd suspicion that Madame had
arranged it so, and that it was not so much the absence of Monsieur that
disturbed her as the extraordinary behaviour of Madame. And they show
that from first to last she was incurably homesick.

Now if Charlotte had been in any degree, latently, or increasingly, or
violently in love with M. Heger, she would have been as miserable as you
like in M. Heger's house, but she would not have been homesick; she
would not, I think, have worried quite so much about Madame's behaviour;
and she would have found the clue to it sooner than she did.

To me it is all so simple and self-evident that, if the story were not
revived periodically, if it had not been raked up again only the other
day,[A] there would be no need to dwell upon anything so pitiful and
silly.

[Footnote A: S