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.
"Never," said he, as he ground his teeth, "never was anything at
once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my
hand!" (And he shook me with the force of his hold.) "I could bend
her with my finger and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent,
if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the
resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with more
than courage--with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I
cannot get at it--the savage, beautiful creature! If I tear, if I
rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose.
Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to
heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-
place. And it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue and
purity--that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself you
could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you
would: seized against your will, you will elude the grasp like an
essence--you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh! come,
Jane, come!"