CHAPTER XXVII 399
" Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed?" His voice rose.
" I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to die tranquil."
" Then you snatch love and innocence from me? You fling me back on lust for a passion-- vice for an occupation?"
" Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for myself. We were born to strive and endure-- you as well as I: do so. You will forget me before I forget you."
" You make me a liar by such language: you sully my honour. I declared I could not change: you tell me to my face I shall change soon. And what a distortion in your judgment, what a perversity in your ideas, is proved by your conduct! Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach? for you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me?"
This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. " Oh, comply!" it said. " Think of his misery; think of his danger-- look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair-- soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for YOU? or who will be injured by what you do?"
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