CHAPTER XXVII 404 was out of Thornfield .
A mile off , beyond the fields , lay a road which stretched in the contrary direction to Millcote ; a road I had never travelled , but often noticed , and wondered where it led : thither I bent my steps . No reflection was to be allowed now : not one glance was to be cast back ; not even one forward . Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future . The first was a page so heavenly sweet -- so deadly sad -- that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy . The last was an awful blank : something like the world when the deluge was gone by .
I skirted fields , and hedges , and lanes till after sunrise . I believe it was a lovely summer morning : I know my shoes , which I had put on when I left the house , were soon wet with dew . But I looked neither to rising sun , nor smiling sky , nor wakening nature . He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold , thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road , but of the block and axe-edge ; of the disseverment of bone and vein ; of the grave gaping at the end : and I thought of drear flight and homeless wandering -- and oh ! with agony I thought of what I left . I could not help it . I thought of him now -- in his room -- watching the sunrise ; hoping I should soon come to say I would stay with him and be his . I longed to be his ; I panted to return : it was not too late ; I could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement . As yet my flight , I was sure , was undiscovered . I could go back and be his comforter -- his pride ; his redeemer from misery , perhaps from ruin . Oh , that fear of his self-abandonment -- far worse than my abandonment -- how it goaded me ! It was a barbed arrow-head in my breast ; it tore me when I tried to extract it ; it sickened me when remembrance thrust it farther in . Birds began singing in brake and copse : birds were faithful to their mates ; birds were emblems of love . What was I ? In the midst of my pain of heart and frantic effort of principle , I abhorred myself . I had no solace from self- approbation : none even from self-respect . I had injured -- wounded -- left my master . I was hateful in my own eyes . Still I could not turn , nor retrace one step . God must have led me on . As to my own will or conscience , impassioned grief had trampled one and stifled the other . I was weeping wildly as I walked along my solitary way : fast , fast I went like one delirious . A weakness , beginning inwardly , extending