“Will you have a little more water, sir?  I spilt half of what was in the glass,” I said.

“Who is it?  What is it?  Who speaks?”

“Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here.  I came only this evening,” I answered.

“Great God! —­ what delusion has come over me?  What sweet madness has seized me?”

“No delusion —­ no madness:  your mind, sir, is too strong for delusion, your health too sound for frenzy.”

“And where is the speaker?  Is it only a voice?  Oh!  I cannot see, but I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst.  Whatever —­ whoever you are —­ be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live!”

He groped; I arrested his wandering hand, and prisoned it in both mine.

“Her very fingers!” he cried; “her small, slight fingers!  If so there must be more of her.”

The muscular hand broke from my custody; my arm was seized, my shoulder —­ neck —­ waist —­ I was entwined and gathered to him.

“Is it Jane?  What is it?  This is her shape —­ this is her size —­ "

“And this her voice,” I added.  “She is all here:  her heart, too.  God bless you, sir!  I am glad to be so near you again.”

“Jane Eyre! —­ Jane Eyre,” was all he said.

“My dear master,” I answered, “I am Jane Eyre:  I have found you out —­ I am come back to you.”

“In truth? —­ in the flesh?  My living Jane?”

“You touch me, sir, —­ you hold me, and fast enough:  I am not cold like a corpse, nor vacant like air, am I?”

“My living darling!  These are certainly her limbs, and these her features; but I cannot be so blest, after all my misery.  It is a dream; such dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her once more to my heart, as I do now; and kissed her, as thus —­ and felt that she loved me, and trusted that she would not leave me.”

“Which I never will, sir, from this day.”

“Never will, says the vision?  But I always woke and found it an empty mockery; and I was desolate and abandoned —­ my life dark, lonely, hopeless —­ my soul athirst and forbidden to drink —­ my heart famished and never to be fed.  Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you:  but kiss me before you go —­ embrace me, Jane.”

“There, sir —­ and there!"’

I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes —­ I swept his hair from his brow, and kissed that too.  He suddenly seemed to arouse himself:  the conviction of the reality of all this seized him.

“It is you —­ is it, Jane?  You are come back to me then?”

“I am.”

“And you do not lie dead in some ditch under some stream?  And you are not a pining outcast amongst strangers?”

“No, sir!  I am an independent woman now.”

“Independent!  What do you mean, Jane?”