all? Nobody
could possibly have had more respect for the ten commandments. For all
Rochester's raging, the ten commandments remain exactly where they were.
It was inconceivable to Charlotte Bronte that any decent man or woman
could make hay, or wish to make hay, of them. And yet Jane offended. She
sinned against the unwritten code that ordains that a woman may lie till
she is purple in the face, but she must not, as a piece of gratuitous
information, tell a man she loves him; not, that is to say, in as many
words. She may declare her passion unmistakably in other ways. She may
exhibit every ignominious and sickly sign of it; her eyes may glow like
hot coals; she may tremble; she may flush and turn pale; she may do
almost anything, provided she does not speak the actual words. In
mid-Victorian times an enormous licence was allowed her. She might
faint, with perfect propriety, in public; she might become anaemic and
send for the doctor, and be ordered iron; she might fall ill, horridly
and visibly, and have to be taken away to spas and places to drink the
waters. Everybody knew what that meant. If she had shrieked her passion
on the housetops she could hardly have published it more violently; but
nobody minded. It was part of the mid-Victorian convention.

Jane Eyre did none of these things. As soon as she was aware of her
passion for Mr. Rochester she thrust it down into the pocket of her
voluminous mid-Victorian skirt and sat on it. Instead of languishing and
fainting where Rochester could see her, she held her head rather higher
than usual, and practised the spirited arts of retort and repartee. And
nobody gave her any credit for it. Then Rochester puts the little thing
(poor Jane was only eighteen when it happened) to the torture, and, with
the last excruciating turn of the thumbscrew, she confesses. That was
the enormity that was never forgiven her.

"'You'll like Ireland, I think,'" says Rochester in his torturing mood;
"'they are such kind-hearted people there.'

"'It is a long way off, sir.'

"'No matter, a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the
distance.'

"'Not the voyage, but the distance: and then the sea is a barrier.'

"'From what, Jane?'

"'From England and from Thornfield, and--'

"'Well?'

"'From _you_, sir.'"

She had done it. She had said, or almost said the words.

It just happened. There was magic in the orchard at Thornfield; there
was youth in her blood; and--"Jane, d