“It was because I felt and knew this, that I resolved to marry you.  To tell me that I had already a wife is empty mockery:  you know now that I had but a hideous demon.  I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I feared a stubbornness that exists in your character.  I feared early instilled prejudice:  I wanted to have you safe before hazarding confidences.  This was cowardly:  I should have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first, as I do now —­ opened to you plainly my life of agony —­ described to you my hunger and thirst after a higher and worthier existence —­ shown to you, not my resolution (that word is weak), but my resistless bent to love faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and well loved in return.  Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge of fidelity and to give me yours.  Jane —­ give it me now.”

A pause.

“Why are you silent, Jane?”

I was experiencing an ordeal:  a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals.  Terrible moment:  full of struggle, blackness, burning!  Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved; and him who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped:  and I must renounce love and idol.  One drear word comprised my intolerable duty —­ “Depart!”

“Jane, you understand what I want of you?  Just this promise —­ ’I will be yours, Mr. Rochester.’”

“Mr. Rochester, I will not be yours.”

Another long silence.

“Jane!” recommenced he, with a gentleness that broke me down with grief, and turned me stone-cold with ominous terror —­ for this still voice was the pant of a lion rising —­ “Jane, do you mean to go one way in the world, and to let me go another?”

“I do.”

“Jane” (bending towards and embracing me), “do you mean it now?”

“I do.”

“And now?” softly kissing my forehead and cheek.

“I do,” extricating myself from restraint rapidly and completely.

“Oh, Jane, this is bitter!  This —­ this is wicked.  It would not be wicked to love me.”

“It would to obey you.”

A wild look raised his brows —­ crossed his features:  he rose; but he forebore yet.  I laid my hand on the back of a chair for support:  I shook, I feared —­ but I resolved.

“One instant, Jane.  Give one glance to my horrible life when you are gone.  All happiness will be torn away with you.  What then is left?  For a wife I have but the maniac upstairs:  as well might you refer me to some corpse in yonder churchyard.  What shall I do, Jane?  Where turn for a companion and for some hope?”

“Do as I do:  trust in God and yourself.  Believe in heaven.  Hope to meet again there.”

“Then you will not yield?”

“No.”

“Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed?” His voice rose.

“I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to die tranquil.”