“Will you have a little more water, sir? I spilt half of what was in the glass,” I said.

“Who is it? What is it? Who speaks?”

“Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here. I came only this evening,” I answered.

“Great God!—what delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me?”

“No delusion—no madness: your mind, sir, is too strong for delusion, your health too sound for frenzy.”

“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. Whatever—whoever you are—be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live!”

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—waist—I was entwined and gathered to him.

“Is it Jane? What is it? This is her shape—this is her size—”

“And this her voice,” I added. “She is all here: her heart, too. God bless you, sir! I am glad to be so near you again.”

“Jane Eyre!—Jane Eyre,” was all he said.

“My dear master,” I answered, “I am Jane Eyre: I have found you out—I am come back to you.”

“In truth?—in the flesh? My living Jane?”

“You touch me, sir,—you hold me, and fast enough: I am not cold like a corpse, nor vacant like air, am I?”

“My living darling! These are certainly her limbs, and these her features; but I cannot be so blest, after all my misery. It is a dream; such dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her once more to my heart, as I do now; and kissed her, as thus—and felt that she loved me, and trusted that she would not leave me.”