CHAPTER XIV 174
He said this as if he spoke to a vision, viewless to any eye but his own; then, folding his arms, which he had half extended, on his chest, he seemed to enclose in their embrace the invisible being.
" Now," he continued, again addressing me, " I have received the pilgrim-- a disguised deity, as I verily believe. Already it has done me good: my heart was a sort of charnel; it will now be a shrine."
" To speak truth, sir, I don ' t understand you at all: I cannot keep up the conversation, because it has got out of my depth. Only one thing, I know: you said you were not as good as you should like to be, and that you regretted your own imperfection;-- one thing I can comprehend: you intimated that to have a sullied memory was a perpetual bane. It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections, to which you might revert with pleasure."
" Justly thought; rightly said, Miss Eyre; and, at this moment, I am paving hell with energy."
" Sir?"
" I am laying down good intentions, which I believe durable as flint. Certainly, my associates and pursuits shall be other than they have been."
" And better?"
" And better-- so much better as pure ore is than foul dross. You seem to doubt me; I don ' t doubt myself: I know what my aim is, what my motives are; and at this moment I pass a law, unalterable as that of the Medes and Persians, that both are right."
" They cannot be, sir, if they require a new statute to legalise them."