latticed and narrow: the front-door was narrow too, one
step led up to it.... It was still as a church on a week-day; the
pattering rain on the forest leaves was the only sound audible....

"I heard a movement--that narrow front-door was unclosing, and some
shape was about to issue from the grange.

"It opened slowly; a figure came out into the twilight and stood on the
step; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to feel
whether it rained. Dark as it was I had recognized him....

"His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever.... But in
his countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding--that
reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous
to approach in his sullen woe. The caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes
cruelty has extinguished, might look as looked that sightless Samson."

Again--Rochester hears Jane's voice in the room where she comes to him.

"'And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I _cannot_ see, but
I must feel or my heart will stop and my brain burst.'...

"He groped. I arrested his wandering hand, and prisoned it in both mine.

"'Her very fingers!' he cried; 'her small, slight fingers! If so, there
must be more of her.'

"The muscular hand broke from my custody; my arm was seized, my
shoulder--neck--wrist--I was entwined and gathered to him....

"I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes--I swept
back his hair from his brow and kissed that too. He suddenly seemed to
rouse himself: the conviction of the reality of all this seized him.

"'It is you--is it, Jane? You are come back to me then?'

"'I am.'"

The scene as it stands is far from perfect; but only Charlotte Bronte
could sustain so strong an illusion of passion through so many lapses.
And all that passion counts for no more than half in the astounding
effect of reality she produces. Before _Jane Eyre_ there is no novel
written by a woman, with the one exception of _Wuthering Heights_, that
conveys so poignant an impression of surroundings, of things seen and
heard, of the earth and sky; of weather; of the aspects of houses and of
rooms. It suggests a positive exaltation of the senses of sound and
light, an ecstasy, an enchantment before the visible, tangible world. It
is not a matter of mere faithful observation (though few painters have
possessed so incorruptibly the innocence of the eye). It is an almost
supernatural intentness; sensatio