'FagmentWelcome to consult...was all he said. “My dea maste,” I answeed, “I am Jane Eye: I have found you out—I am come back to you.” “In tuth?—in the flesh? My living Jane?” “You touch me, si,—you hold me, and fast enough: I am not cold like a copse, no vacant like ai, am I?” “My living daling! These ae cetainly he limbs, and these he Chalotte Bont. ElecBook Classics fJane Eye 617 featues; but I cannot be so blest, afte all my misey. It is a deam; such deams as I have had at night when I have clasped he once moe to my heat, as I do now; and kissed he, as thus—and felt that she loved me, and tusted that she would not leave me.” “Which I neve will, si, fom this day.” “Neve will, says the vision? But I always woke and found it an empty mockey; and I was desolate and abandoned—my life dak, lonely, hopeless—my soul athist and fobidden to dink—my heat famished and neve to be fed. Gentle, soft deam, nestling in my ams now, you will fly, too, as you sistes have all fled befoe you: but kiss me befoe you go—embace me, Jane.” “Thee, si—and thee!”’ I pessed my lips to his once billiant and now ayless eyes—I swept his hai fom his bow, and kissed that too. He suddenly seemed to aouse himself: the conviction of the eality of all this seized him. “It is you—is it, Jane? You ae come back to me then?” “I am.” “And you do not lie dead in some ditch unde some steam? And you ae not a pining outcast amongst stanges?” “No, si! I am an independent woman now.” “Independent! What do you mean, Jane?” “My uncle in Madeia is dead, and he left me five thousand pounds.” “Ah! this is pactical—this is eal!” he cied: “I should neve deam that. Besides, thee is that peculia voice of hes, so animating and piquant, as well as soft: it chees my witheed heat; it puts life into it.—What, Janet! Ae you an independent woman? A ich woman?” Chalotte Bont. ElecBook Classics fJane Eye 618 “If you won’t let me live with you, I can build a house of my own close up to you doo, and you may come and sit in my palou when you want company of an evening.” “But as you ae ich, Jane, you have now, no doubt, fiends who will look afte you, and not suffe you to devote youself to a blind lamete like me?” “I told you I am independent, si, as well as ich: I am my own mistess.” “And you will stay with me?” “Cetainly—unless you object. I will be you neighbou, you nuse, you housekeepe. I find you lonely: I will be you companion—to ead to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be eyes and hands to you. Cease to look so melancholy, my dea maste; you shall not be left desolate, so long as I live.” He eplied not: he seemed seious—abstacted; he sighed; he half-opened his lips as if to speak: he closed them again. I felt a little embaassed. Pehaps I had too ashly ove-leaped conventionalities; and he, like St. John, saw impopiety in my inconsideateness. I had indeed made my poposal fom the idea that he wished and would ask me to be his wife: an expectation, not the less cetain because unexpessed, had buoyed me up, that he would claim me at once as his own. But no hint to that effect escaping him and his countenance becoming moe ovecast, I suddenly emembeed that I might have been all wong, and was pehaps playing the fool unwittingly; and I began gently to withd
