, but on the earth. A sudden
sense of relief flowed from my heart through every limb. I relinquished
my labour of agony, and turned consoled at once: unspeakably consoled.
Her presence was with me: it remained while I re-filled the grave, and
led me home. You may laugh, if you will; but I was sure I should see her
there. I was sure she was with me, and I could not help talking to her.
Having reached the Heights, I rushed eagerly to the door. It was
fastened; and, I remember, that accursed Earnshaw and my wife opposed my
entrance. I remember stopping to kick the breath out of him, and then
hurrying up-stairs, to my room and hers. I looked round impatiently--I
felt her by me--I could _almost_ see her, and yet I _could not_! I ought
to have sweat blood then, from the anguish of my yearning--from the
fervour of my supplications to have but one glimpse! I had not one. She
showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! And, since
then, sometimes more and sometimes less, I've been the sport of that
intolerable torture! Infernal! keeping my nerves at such a stretch that,
if they had not resembled catgut, they would long ago have relaxed to the
feebleness of Linton's. When I sat in the house with Hareton, it seemed
that on going out I should meet her; when I walked on the moors I should
meet her coming in. When I went from home I hastened to return; she
_must_ be somewhere at the Heights, I was certain! And when I slept in
her chamber--I was beaten out of that. I couldn't lie there; for the
moment I closed my eyes, she was either outside the window, or sliding
back the panels, or entering the room, or even resting her darling head
on the same pillow as she did when a child; and I must open my lids to
see. And so I opened and closed them a hundred times a night--to be
always disappointed! It racked me! I've often groaned aloud, till that
old rascal Joseph no doubt believed that my conscience was playing the
fiend inside of me. Now, since I've seen her, I'm pacified--a little. It
was a strange way of killing: not by inches, but by fractions of
hairbreadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope through eighteen
years!'

Mr. Heathcliff paused and wiped his forehead; his hair clung to it, wet
with perspiration; his eyes were fixed on the red embers of the fire, the
brows not contracted, but raised next the temples; diminishing the grim
aspect of his countenance, but imparting a peculiar look of troub