That, Charlotte’s worst lapse, is a very brief one, and the scene itself is unimportant.  But what can be said of the crucial scene of the novel, the tremendous scene of passion and temptation?  There is passion in the scene before it, between Jane and Rochester on the afternoon of the wedding-day that brought no wedding.

“’Jane, I never meant to wound you thus.  If the man who had but one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his bread, and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody blunder more than I now rue mine.  Will you ever forgive me?’...  ’You know I am a scoundrel, Jane?’ ere long he inquired wistfully, wondering, I suppose, at my continued silence and tameness; the result of weakness rather than of will.

“‘Yes, sir.’

“‘Then tell me so roundly and sharply—­don’t spare me.’

“‘I cannot; I am tired and sick.  I want some water.’

“He heaved a sort of shuddering sigh, and, taking me in his arms, carried me downstairs.”

But there are terrible lapses.  After Rochester’s cry, “’Jane, my little darling ...  If you were mad, do you think I should hate you,’” he elaborates his idea and he is impossible:  “’Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken it would be my treasure still; if you raved, my arms should confine you and not a strait waistcoat—­your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me; if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace at least as fond as it would be restrictive.’”

And in the final scene of temptation there is a most curious mingling of reality and unreality, of the passion which is poetry, and the poetry which is not passion.

“‘Never,’ said he, as he ground his teeth, ’never was anything so frail, and so indomitable.  A mere reed she feels in my hand!’ And he shook me with the force of his hold.  ’I could bend her with my finger and thumb; and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her?  Consider that eye:  consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with more than courage—­with a stern triumph.  Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it—­the savage, beautiful creature!  If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose.  Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-place.  And it is you, spirit—­with will and energy, and virtue and purity—­that I want:  not alone your brittle frame.  Of yourself, you could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you would; seized against your will you will elude the grasp like an essence—­you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance.  Oh, come, Jane, come!’”

It is the crucial scene of the book; and with all its power, with all its vehemence and passionate reality it is unconvincing.  It stirs you and it leaves you cold.