o the footman, "Cease that chatter,
blockhead, and do my bidding."

That, Charlotte's worst lapse, is a very brief one, and the scene
itself is unimportant. But what can be said of the crucial scene of the
novel, the tremendous scene of passion and temptation? There _is_
passion in the scene before it, between Jane and Rochester on the
afternoon of the wedding-day that brought no wedding.

"'Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one
little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his
bread, and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake
slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody
blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me?'... 'You
know I am a scoundrel, Jane?' ere long he inquired wistfully, wondering,
I suppose, at my continued silence and tameness; the result of weakness
rather than of will.

"'Yes, sir.'

"'Then tell me so roundly and sharply--don't spare me.'

"'I cannot; I am tired and sick. I want some water.'

"He heaved a sort of shuddering sigh, and, taking me in his arms,
carried me downstairs."

But there are terrible lapses. After Rochester's cry, "'Jane, my little
darling ... If you were mad, do you think I should hate you,'" he
elaborates his idea and he is impossible: "'Your mind is my treasure,
and if it were broken it would be my treasure still; if you raved, my
arms should confine you and not a strait waistcoat--your grasp, even in
fury, would have a charm for me; if you flew at me as wildly as that
woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace at least as
fond as it would be restrictive.'"

And in the final scene of temptation there is a most curious mingling of
reality and unreality, of the passion which is poetry, and the poetry
which is not passion.

"'Never,' said he, as he ground his teeth, 'never was anything 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