“It is a long way off, sir.”

“No matter —­ a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the distance.”

“Not the voyage, but the distance:  and then the sea is a barrier —­ "

“From what, Jane?”

“From England and from Thornfield:  and —­ "

“Well?”

“From you, sir.”

I said this almost involuntarily, and, with as little sanction of free will, my tears gushed out.  I did not cry so as to be heard, however; I avoided sobbing.  The thought of Mrs. O’Gall and Bitternutt Lodge struck cold to my heart; and colder the thought of all the brine and foam, destined, as it seemed, to rush between me and the master at whose side I now walked, and coldest the remembrance of the wider ocean —­ wealth, caste, custom intervened between me and what I naturally and inevitably loved.

“It is a long way,” I again said.

“It is, to be sure; and when you get to Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland, I shall never see you again, Jane:  that’s morally certain.  I never go over to Ireland, not having myself much of a fancy for the country.  We have been good friends, Jane; have we not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And when friends are on the eve of separation, they like to spend the little time that remains to them close to each other.  Come! we’ll talk over the voyage and the parting quietly half-an-hour or so, while the stars enter into their shining life up in heaven yonder:  here is the chestnut tree:  here is the bench at its old roots.  Come, we will sit there in peace to-night, though we should never more be destined to sit there together.”  He seated me and himself.

“It is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and I am sorry to send my little friend on such weary travels:  but if I can’t do better, how is it to be helped?  Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?”

I could risk no sort of answer by this time:  my heart was still.

“Because,” he said, “I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you —­ especially when you are near me, as now:  it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.  And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.  As for you, —­ you’d forget me.”

“That I never should, sir:  You know —­ " Impossible to proceed.

“Jane, do you hear that nightingale singing in the wood?  Listen!”

In listening, I sobbed convulsively; for I could repress what I endured no longer; I was obliged to yield, and I was shaken from head to foot with acute distress.  When I did speak, it was only to express an impetuous wish that I had never been born, or never come to Thornfield.