I interrupted him.  Anything like a tangible reproach gave me courage at once.  “Keep to common sense, St. John:  you are verging on nonsense.  You pretend to be shocked by what I have said.  You are not really shocked:  for, with your superior mind, you cannot be either so dull or so conceited as to misunderstand my meaning.  I say again, I will be your curate, if you like, but never your wife.”

Again he turned lividly pale; but, as before, controlled his passion perfectly.  He answered emphatically but calmly —

“A female curate, who is not my wife, would never suit me.  With me, then, it seems, you cannot go:  but if you are sincere in your offer, I will, while in town, speak to a married missionary, whose wife needs a coadjutor.  Your own fortune will make you independent of the Society’s aid; and thus you may still be spared the dishonour of breaking your promise and deserting the band you engaged to join.”

Now I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formal promise or entered into any engagement; and this language was all much too hard and much too despotic for the occasion.  I replied —

“There is no dishonour, no breach of promise, no desertion in the case.  I am not under the slightest obligation to go to India, especially with strangers.  With you I would have ventured much, because I admire, confide in, and, as a sister, I love you; but I am convinced that, go when and with whom I would, I should not live long in that climate.”

“Ah! you are afraid of yourself,” he said, curling his lip.

“I am.  God did not give me my life to throw away; and to do as you wish me would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to committing suicide.  Moreover, before I definitively resolve on quitting England, I will know for certain whether I cannot be of greater use by remaining in it than by leaving it.”

“What do you mean?”

“It would be fruitless to attempt to explain; but there is a point on which I have long endured painful doubt, and I can go nowhere till by some means that doubt is removed.”

“I know where your heart turns and to what it clings.  The interest you cherish is lawless and unconsecrated.  Long since you ought to have crushed it:  now you should blush to allude to it.  You think of Mr. Rochester?”

It was true.  I confessed it by silence.

“Are you going to seek Mr. Rochester?”

“I must find out what is become of him.”

“It remains for me, then,” he said, “to remember you in my prayers, and to entreat God for you, in all earnestness, that you may not indeed become a castaway.  I had thought I recognised in you one of the chosen.  But God sees not as man sees:  His will be done —­ "

He opened the gate, passed through it, and strayed away down the glen.  He was soon out of sight.

On re-entering the parlour, I found Diana standing at the window, looking very thoughtful.  Diana was a great deal taller than I:  she put her hand on my shoulder, and, stooping, examined my face.