"I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield:--I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life,--momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight in,--with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death."

     "Where do you see the necessity?" he asked suddenly.

     "Where? You, sir, have placed it before me."

     "In what shape?"

     "In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble and beautiful woman,--your bride."

     "My bride! What bride? I have no bride!"

     "But you will have."

     "Yes;--I will!--I will!" He set his teeth.

     "Then I must go:--you have said it yourself."