ll to lift a slate off either roof
has vanished! My old enemies have not beaten me; now would be the
precise time to revenge myself on their representatives: I could do it;
and none could hinder me. But where is the use? I don't care for
striking: I can't take the trouble to raise my hand! That sounds as if I
had been labouring the whole time only to exhibit a fine trait of
magnanimity. It is far from being the case: I have lost the faculty of
enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.

'Nelly, there is a strange change approaching; I'm in its shadow at
present. I take so little interest in my daily life that I hardly
remember to eat and drink. Those two who have left the room are the only
objects which retain a distinct material appearance to me; and that
appearance causes me pain, amounting to agony. About _her_ I won't
speak; and I don't desire to think; but I earnestly wish she were
invisible: her presence invokes only maddening sensations. _He_ moves me
differently: and yet if I could do it without seeming insane, I'd never
see him again! You'll perhaps think me rather inclined to become so,' he
added, making an effort to smile, 'if I try to describe the thousand
forms of past associations and ideas he awakens or embodies. But you'll
not talk of what I tell you; and my mind is so eternally secluded in
itself, it is tempting at last to turn it out to another.

'Five minutes ago Hareton seemed a personification of my youth, not a
human being; I felt to him in such a variety of ways, that it would have
been impossible to have accosted him rationally. In the first place, his
startling likeness to Catherine connected him fearfully with her. That,
however, which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination,
is actually the least: for what is not connected with her to me? and what
does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features
are shaped in the flags! In every cloud, in every tree--filling the air
at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day--I am surrounded
with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and women--my own
features--mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful
collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!
Well, Hareton's aspect was the ghost of my immortal love; of my wild
endeavours to hold my right; my degradation, my pride, my happiness, and
my anguish--

'But it is frenzy