perceived well.  When —­ how —­ whither, I could not yet discern; but he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield.  Real affection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it had been only fitful passion:  that was balked; he would want me no more.  I should fear even to cross his path now:  my view must be hateful to him.  Oh, how blind had been my eyes!  How weak my conduct!

My eyes were covered and closed:  eddying darkness seemed to swim round me, and reflection came in as black and confused a flow.  Self-abandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come:  to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength.  I lay faint, longing to be dead.  One idea only still throbbed life-like within me —­ a remembrance of God:  it begot an unuttered prayer:  these words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind, as something that should be whispered, but no energy was found to express them —

“Be not far from me, for trouble is near:  there is none to help.”

It was near:  and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it —­ as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips —­ it came:  in full heavy swing the torrent poured over me.  The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass.  That bitter hour cannot be described:  in truth, “the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire:  I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.”

CHAPTER XXVII

Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round and seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall, I asked, “What am I to do?”

But the answer my mind gave —­ “Leave Thornfield at once” —­ was so prompt, so dread, that I stopped my ears.  I said I could not bear such words now.  “That I am not Edward Rochester’s bride is the least part of my woe,” I alleged:  “that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and found them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master; but that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable.  I cannot do it.”

But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it and foretold that I should do it.  I wrestled with my own resolution:  I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me; and Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.

“Let me be torn away,” then I cried.  “Let another help me!”

“No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you:  you shall yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand:  your heart shall be the victim, and you the priest to transfix it.”