“Then you snatch love and innocence from me?  You fling me back on lust for a passion —­ vice for an occupation?”

“Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for myself.  We were born to strive and endure —­ you as well as I:  do so.  You will forget me before I forget you.”

“You make me a liar by such language:  you sully my honour.  I declared I could not change:  you tell me to my face I shall change soon.  And what a distortion in your judgment, what a perversity in your ideas, is proved by your conduct!  Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach? for you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me?”

This was true:  and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him.  They spoke almost as loud as Feeling:  and that clamoured wildly.  “Oh, comply!” it said.  “Think of his misery; think of his danger —­ look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair —­ soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his.  Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?”

Still indomitable was the reply —­ “I care for myself.  The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.  I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man.  I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad —­ as I am now.  Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation:  they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be.  If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?  They have a worth —­ so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane —­ quite insane:  with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs.  Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by:  there I plant my foot.”

I did.  Mr. Rochester, reading my countenance, saw I had done so.  His fury was wrought to the highest:  he must yield to it for a moment, whatever followed; he crossed the floor and seized my arm and grasped my waist.  He seemed to devour me with his flaming glance:  physically, I felt, at the moment, powerless as stubble exposed to the draught and glow of a furnace:  mentally, I still possessed my soul, and with it the certainty of ultimate safety.  The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter —­ often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter —­ in the eye.  My eye rose to his; and while I looked in his fierce face I gave an involuntary sigh; his gripe was painful, and my over-taxed strength almost exhausted.