As he said this, he released me from his clutch, and only looked at
me. The look was far worse to resist than the frantic strain: only
an idiot, however, would have succumbed now. I had dared and
baffled his fury; I must elude his sorrow: I retired to the door.
"You are going, Jane?"
"I am going, sir."
"You are leaving me?"
"Yes."
"You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My
deep love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?"
What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard it was to
reiterate firmly, "I am going."
"Jane!"
"Mr. Rochester!"
"Withdraw, then,--I consent; but remember, you leave me here in
anguish. Go up to your own room; think over all I have said, and,
Jane, cast a glance on my sufferings--think of me."
He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. "Oh,
Jane! my hope--my love--my life!" broke in anguish from his lips.
Then came a deep, strong sob.
I had already gained the door; but, reader, I walked back--walked
back as determinedly as I had retreated. I knelt down by him; I
turned his face from the cushion to me; I kissed his cheek; I
smoothed his hair with my hand.
"God bless you, my dear master!" I said. "God keep you from harm
and wrong--direct you, solace you--reward you well for your past
kindness to me."
"Little Jane's love would have been my best reward," he answered;
"without it, my heart is broken. But Jane will give me her love:
yes--nobly, generously."
Up the blood rushed to his face; forth flashed the fire from his
eyes; erect he sprang; he held his arms out; but I evaded the
embrace, and at once quitted the room.
"Farewell!" was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added,
"Farewell for ever!"
That night I never thought to sleep; but a slumber fell on me as
soon as I lay down in bed. I was transported in thought to the
scenes of childhood: I dreamt I lay in the red-room at Gateshead;
that the night was dark, and my mind impressed with strange fears.
The light that long ago had struck me into syncope, recalled in this
vision, seemed glidingly to mount the wall, and tremblingly to pause
in the centre of the obscured ceiling. I lifted up my head to look:
the roof resolved to clouds, high and dim; the gleam was such as the
moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever. I watched her come--
watched with the strangest anticipation; as though some word of doom
were to be written on her disk. She broke forth as never moon yet
burst from cloud: a hand first penetrated the sable folds and waved
them away; then, not a moon, but a white human form shone in the
azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on
me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet
so near, it whispered in my heart "My daughter, flee temptation."