d old,
well-remembered airs her mood suggested, she asked me many questions.

"And am I indeed only like that poor mad thing you thought Jane Eyre?"
she said, "or did you read between?"

I answered that it was not her words, not even her thoughts, not even
her poetry that was to me Jane Eyre.

"What then is left of me?" she enquired, stooping her eyes over the
keys and smiling darkly. "Am I indeed so evanescent, a wintry wraith?"

"Well," I said, "Jane Eyre is left."

She pressed her lips together. "I see," she said brightly. "But then,
was I not detestable too? so stubborn, so wilful, so demented,
so--vain?"

"You were vain," I answered, "because--"

"Well?" she said, and the melody died out, and the lower voices of her
music complained softly on.

"For a barrier," I answered.

"A barrier?" she cried.

"Why, yes," I said, "a barrier against cant, and flummery, and
coldness, and pride, and against--why, against your own vanity too."

"That's really very clever--penetrating," she said; "and I really
desired to know, not because I did not know already, but to know I
knew all. You are a perspicacious observer, Mr. Brocken; and to be
that is to be alive in a world of the moribund. But then too how high
one must soar at times; for one must ever condescend in order to
observe faithfully. At any rate, to observe all one must range at an
altitude above all."

"And so," I said, "you have taken your praise from me--"

"But you are a man, and I a woman: we look with differing eyes, each
sex to the other, and perceive by contrast. Else--why, how else could
you forgive my presumption? He sees me as an eagle sees the creeping
tortoise. I see him as the moon the sun, never weary of gazing. I
borrow his radiance to observe him by. But I weary you with my
garrulous tongue.... Have you no plan at all in your journey? 'Tis not
the dangers, but to me the endless restlessness of such a
venture--that 'Oh, where shall wisdom be found?'... Will you not
pause?--stay with us a few days to consider again this rash journey?
To each his world: it is surely perilous to transgress its fixed
boundaries."

"Who knows?" I cried, rather arrogantly perhaps. "The sorcery that
lured me hither may carry me as lightly back. But I have tasted honey
and covet the hive."

She glanced sidelong at me with that stealthy gravity that lay under
all her lightness.

"That delicious Rosinante!" she exclaimed softly.... "And I really
believe too _I