I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad – as I am now.

All the red flags about Mr. Rochester come home to roost once Jane recognizes the necessity of leaving him.

Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round and seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall, I asked, “What am I to do?”
But the answer my mind gave – “Leave Thornfield at once” – was so prompt, so dread, that I stopped my ears: I said, I could not bear such words now. “That I am not Edward Rochester’s bride is the least part of my woe,” I alleged: “that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and found them void and vain, is a horror I could not bear and master; but that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable.”
But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it; and foretold that I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me; and conscience, turned tyrant, held passion by the throat, told her tauntingly she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.
“Let me be torn away, than!” I cried. “Let another help me!”
“No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall, yourself, pluck out your right eye: yourself cut off your right hand: your heart shall be the victim; and you, the priest, to transfix is.”

This refers to a teaching of Jesus that if your right hand (or your eye) causes you to sin, it would be better for you to cut it off. So if Mr. Rochester is causing her to sin, she has to cut him out of her life.

Then she finally opens her door and discovers that Mr. Rochester’s just been sitting there waiting for her to come out.

“I see a white cheek and a faded eye, but no trace of tears. I suppose, then, your heart has been weeping blood?”
“Well, Jane; not a word of reproach? Nothing bitter – nothing poignant? Nothing to cut a feeling or sting a passion? You sit quietly where I have placed you, and regard me with a weary, passive look.
“Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me?”
Reader! – I forgave him at the moment, and on the spot. There was such deep remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such manly energy in his manner; and, besides, there was unchanged love in his whole look and mien – I forgave him all: yet not in words, not outwardly; only at my heart’s core.

The reference to the lamb is another Bible reference – specifically linked to the story of David and Bathsheba, which was traditionally framed as a case of adultery (although by modern standards, it would certainly constitute sexual assault instead). Notably, Mr. Rochester instead frames HIMSELF as the injured party.

Anyhow, at least he relents somewhat when she reminds him that she’s barely eaten all day, and offers her some dinner in the library.

Suddenly he turned away, with an inarticulate exclamation, full of passionate emotion of some kind; he walked fast through the room and came back: he stooped towards me as if to kiss me; but I remembered caresses were now forbidden. I turned my face away, and put his aside.
“What! – How is this?” he exclaimed hastily. “Oh, I know! you won’t kiss the husband of Bertha Mason? You consider my arms filled and my embraces appropriated?”
“At any rate, there is no room nor claim for me, sir.”
“Why, Jane? I will spare you the trouble of much talking: I will answer for you – because I have a wife already, you would reply. – I guess rightly?”
“Yes.”

At this point, Jane recognizes that she SHOULD leave, but doesn’t quite grasp the urgency of the situation yet.

“If you think so, you must have a strange opinion of me: you must regard me as a plotting profligate – a base and low rake who has been simulating disinterested love in order to draw you into a snare deliberately laid, and strip you of honour, and rob you of self-respect. What do you say to that? I see you can say nothing: in the first place, you are faint still, and have enough to do to draw your breath; in the second place, you cannot yet accustom yourself to accuse and revile me; and, besides, the flood-gates of tears are opened, and they would rush out if you spoke much; and you have no desire to expostulate, to upbraid, to make a scene: you are thinking how to act, – talking, you consider, is of no use. I know you – I am on my guard.”
“Sir, I do not wish to act against you,” I said; and my unsteady voice warned me to curtail my sentence.
“Not in your sense of the word, but in mine, you are scheming to destroy me. You as good as said that I am a married man – as a married man you will shun me, keep out of my way: just now you refused to kiss me. You intend to make yourself a complete stranger to me; to live under this roof only as Adèle’s governess: if ever I say a friendly word to you, if ever a friendly feeling inclines you again to me, you will say, – ‘That man had nearly made me his mistress: I must be ice and rock to him;’ and ice and rock you will accordingly become.”
I cleared and steadied my voice to reply: “All is changed about me, sir; I must change too – there is no doubt of that; and to avoid fluctuations of feeling, and continual combats with recollections and associations, there is only one way – Adèle must have a new governess, sir.”

He then announces that he’ll just send Adèle to school, and expands on his plans for Jane.

“Jane, you shall not stay here, nor will I. I was wrong ever to bring you to Thornfield Hall, knowing as I did how it was haunted. I charged them to conceal from you, before I ever saw you, all knowledge of the curse of the place; merely because I feared Adèle never would have a governess to stay if she knew with what inmate she was housed, and my plans would not permit me to remove the maniac elsewhere – though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement. Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge: but to each villain his own vice; and mine is not a tendency to indirect assassination, even of what I most hate.
“Concealing the mad-woman’s neighbourhood from you, however, was something like covering a child with a cloak, and laying it down near an upas-tree: that demon’s vicinage is poisoned, and always was. But I’ll shut up Thornfield Hall: I’ll nail up the front door, and board the lower windows; I’ll give Mrs. Poole two hundred a year to live here with my wife, as you term that fearful hag: Grace will do much for money, and she shall have her son, the keeper of Grimsby Retreat, to bear her company and be at hand to aid her in the paroxysms when my wife is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on” –
“Sir,” I interrupted him, “you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady: you speak of her with hate – with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel – she cannot help being mad.”
“Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don’t know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?”
“I do indeed, sir.”

Because, naturally, Jane would pity Bertha, especially considering how Mr. Rochester demeans her. Of course Mr. Rochester protests that if Jane were “mad” he’d still love her and care for her, but that’s beside the point, because her main issue at the moment is how he treats his current wife.

“I was talking of removing you from Thornfield. All, you know, is prepared for prompt departure: to-morrow you shall go. I only ask you to endure one more night under this roof, Jane: and then, farewell to miseries and terrors for ever! I have a place to repair to which will be a secure sanctuary from hateful reminiscences, from unwelcome intrusion – even from falsehood and slander.”
“And take Adèle with you, sir,” I interrupted; “she will be a companion for you.”

Jane intentionally misconstrues him as saying that shall depart from Thornfield without her, which naturally just makes him angry.

“You spoke of retirement, sir; and retirement and solitude are dull: too dull for you.”
“Solitude! solitude!” he reiterated, with irritation. “I see I must come to an explanation. I don’t know what sphinx-like expression is forming in your countenance. you are to share my solitude. Do you understand?”
I shook my head: it required a degree of courage, excited as he was becoming, even to risk that mute sign of dissent. He had been walking fast about the room, and he stopped, as if suddenly rooted to one spot.

She’d hoped she could just return to normal while he looked for a new governess, and if he had, maybe he could’ve worn her down. But with him just demanding that she live with him, Jane’s mind is immediately made up.

“Now for the hitch in Jane’s character,” he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. “The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble! By God! I long to exert a fraction of Sampson’s strength, and break the entanglement like tow!”
He recommenced his walk: but soon again stopped, and this time just before me.
“Jane! will you listen to reason?” (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear) “because, if you won’t, I’ll try violence.” His voice was hoarse; his looks that of a man who is just about to burst an insufferable bond and plunge headlong into wild license. I saw that in another moment, and with one impetus of frenzy more, I should be able to do nothing with him. The present – the passing second of time – was all I had in which to control ad restrain him: a movement of repulsion, flight, fear, would have sealed my doom, – and his. But I was not afraid: not in the least. I felt an inward power; a sense of influence, which supported me. The crisis was perilous; but not without its charm: such as the Indian, perhaps, feels when he slips over the rapid in his canoe. I took hold of his clenched hand; loosened the contorted fingers, and said to him, soothingly, – “Sit down; I’ll talk to you as long as you like, and hear all you have to say, whether reasonable or unreasonable.”
He sat down: but he did not get leave to speak directly. I had been struggling with tears for some time; I had taken great pains to repress them, because I knew he would not like to see me weep. Now, however, I considered it well to let them flow as freely and as long as they liked. So I gave way and cried heartily.

I mean, it’s totally understandable after what he’s put her through in the last day – all that stress needs to vent eventually, and this actually serves to calm his rage somewhat.

But then he tries drawing her towards him, which Jane denies him.

“Jane! Jane!” he said, in such an accent of bitter sadness it thrilled along every nerve I had, “you don’t love me, then? It was only my station, and the rank of my wife, that you valued? Now that you think me disqualified to become your husband you recoil from my touch as if I were some toad or ape.”
These words cut me: yet what could I do or say? I ought probably to have done or said nothing: but I was so tortured by a sense of remorse at thus hurting his feelings I could not control the wish to drop balm where I had wounded.
“I do love you,” I said, “more than ever: but I must not show or indulge the feeling: and this is the last time I must express it.”
“The last time, Jane! What! do you think you can live with me, and see me daily, and yet, if you still love me, be always cold and distant?”
“No, sir; that I am certain I could not; and therefore I see there is but one way: but you will be furious if I mention it.”
“Oh, mention it! If I storm, you have the art of weeping.”
“Mr. Rochester, I must leave you.”
“For how long, Jane? For a few minutes, while you smooth your hair – which is somewhat dishevelled; and bathe your face – which looks feverish?”
“I must leave Adèle and Thornfield. I must part with you for my whole life: I must begin a new existence amongst strange faces and strange scenes.”

How DARE you accuse her of crying to get her way when YOU’VE been whining about your man-pain this whole time!

but then it’s HIS turn to deliberately misconstrue HER

“Of course: I told you you should. I pass over the madness about parting from me. You mean you must become a part of me. As to the new existence, it is all right: you shall yet be my wife: I am not married. You shall be Mrs. Rochester – both virtually and nominally. I shall keep only to you as long as you and I live. You shall go to a place I have in the south of France: a white-washed villa on the shores of the Mediterranean. There you shall live a happy, and guarded, and most innocent life. Never fear that I wish to lure you into error – to make you my mistress. Why do you shake your head? Jane, you must be reasonable; or in truth I shall again become frantic.”
His voice and hand quivered; his large nostrils dilated; his eye blazed; still I dared speak: – “Sir, your wife is living: that is a fact acknowledged this morning by yourself. If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be your mistress: to say otherwise is sophistical – is false.”
“Jane, I am not a gentle-tempered man – you forget that: I am not long-enduring; I am not cool and dispassionate. Out of pity to me and yourself, put your finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, and – beware!”
He bared his wrist and offered it to me: the blood was forsaking his cheek and lips; they were growing livid; I was distressed on all hands. To agitate him thus deeply, by a resistance he so abhorred, was cruel: to yield was out of the question. I did what human beings do instinctively when they are driven to utter extremity – looked for aid to one higher than man: the words “God help me!” burst involuntarily from my lips.

Whatever he might think of the situation, Jane feels that to live with him that way would constitute adultery, and thus rejects the idea.

“I am a fool!” cried Mr. Rochester suddenly. “I keep telling her I am not married, and do not explain to her why. I forget she knows nothing of the character of that woman, or the circumstances attending my infernal union with her. Oh, I am certain Jane will agree with me in my opinion when she knows all that I know!”

So at least he relents from pestering her into living with him for a bit to explain why he hates his wife (and doesn’t consider it a true marriage).

He explains how his father and brother refused to divide the estate, and thus sought for him a wife with a sizable purse and nothing else.

“When I left college I was sent to Jamaica, to espouse a bride already courted for me. My father said nothing about her money; but he told me Miss Mason was the boast of Spanish Town for beauty: and this was no lie. I found her a fine woman, in the style of Blanche Ingram; tall, dark, and majestic. Her family wished to secure me, because I was of good race; and so did she. They showed her to me in parties, splendidly dressed. I seldom saw her alone, and had very little private conversation with her. She flattered me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms and accomplishments. All the men in her circle seemed to admire her and envy me. I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited; and being ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her. There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its commission. Her relatives encouraged me; competitors piqued me; she allured me: a marriage was achieved almost before I knew where I was. Oh, I have no respect for myself when I think of that act! – an agony of inward contempt masters me. I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not even know her. I was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her nature: I had marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor refinement in her mind or manners – and, I married her: – gross, grovelling, mole-eyed blockhead that I was! With less sin I might have – but let me remember to whom I am speaking.
“My bride’s mother I had never seen: I understood she was dead. The honeymoon over, I learned my mistake; she was only mad, and shut up in a lunatic asylum. There was a younger brother, too, a complete dumb idiot. The elder one, whom you have seen (and whom I cannot hate, whilst I abhor all his kindred, because he has some grains of affection in his feeble mind; shown in the continued interest he takes in his wretched sister, and also in a dog-like attachment he once bore me), will probably be in the same state one day. My father, and my brother Rowland, knew all this; but they thought only of the thirty thousand pounds, and joined in the plot against me.”

So at least she know English…but the symptoms he describes the brother having aligns with autism, which is known to have a genetic component. I’m only sympathizing with Bertha more and more.

“These were vile discoveries; but, except for the treachery of concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife: even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine; her tastes obnoxious to me; her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger – when I found that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day, with her in comfort: that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because whatever topic I started immediately received from her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile – when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting orders – even then I restrained myself: I eschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance; I repressed the deep antipathy I felt.
“Jane, I will not trouble you with abominable details: some strong words shall express what I have to say. I lived with the woman upstairs four years, and before that time she has tried me indeed: her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check them; and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy intellect she had – and what giant propensities! How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed me! Bertha Mason – the true daughter of an infamous mother, – dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste.”

and all i can think is about how horrible her upbringing must have been to result in that

And if you’re thinking, “Why doesn’t he just divorce her?” evidently there was some sort of law that prevented people from divorcing a…spouse? wife? that was clinically insane, which, to be fair, might have been the only kind of safety net available to those people in that day and age.

“I was physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene, and my ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out; wherein she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate, with such language! – no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary than she: though two rooms off, I heard every word – the thin partitions of the West India house opposing but slight obstruction to her wolfish cries.
“‘This life,’ said I at last, ‘is hell! this is the air – those are the sounds of the bottomless pit! I have a right to deliver myself from it if I can. The sufferings of this mortal state will leave me with the heavy flesh that now cumbers my soul. Of the fanatic’s burning eternity I have no fear; there is not a future state worse than the present one – let me break away, and go home to God!'”

Although I sympathize with Bertha more, he was still trapped in a marriage with someone he despised, and this seems to represent rock bottom for him, with him seriously contemplating suicide.

Then a wind blows in from Europe, and with it, an idea.

“‘Go,’ said Hope, ‘and live again in Europe: there it is not known what a sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound to you. You may take the maniac with you to England; confine her with due attendance and precautions at Thornfield: then travel yourself to what clime you will, and form what new tie you like. That woman, who has so abused your long-suffering – so sullied your name; so outraged your honour; so blighted your youth – is not your wife; nor are you her husband. See that she is cared for as her condition demands, and you have done all that God and Humanity require of you. Let her identity, her connection with yourself, be buried in oblivion: you are bound to impart them to no living being. Place her in safety and comfort: shelter her degradation with secrecy, and leave her.'”

With his brother and father dead, he promptly acts on this.

“What next? How did you proceed? What came of such an event?”
“Precisely: and what do you wish to know?”
“Whether you found any one liked: whether you asked her to marry you; and what she said.”
“I can tell you whether I found one I liked, and whether I asked her to marry me: but what she said is yet to be recorded in the book of Fate. For ten long years I roved about, living first in one capital, then another: sometimes in St. Petersburg; oftener in Paris; occasionally in Rome, Naples, Florence. […] I sought my ideal of a woman amongst English ladies, French countesses, Italian signoras, and German grafinnen. I could not find her. Sometimes, for a fleeting moment, I thought I caught a glance, heard a tone, beheld a form, which announced the realisation of my dream: but I was presently undeceived. You are not to suppose that I desired perfection, either of mind or person. I longed only for what suited me – for the anitipodes of the Creole: and I longed vainly. Amongst them all I found not one whom, had I been ever so free, I – warned as I was of the risks, the horrors, the loathings of incongruous unions -would have to marry me. Disappointment made me reckless. I tried dissipation – never debauchery: that I hated, and hate. That was my Indian Messalina’s attribute: rooted disgust at it and her restrained me much, even in pleasure. Any enjoyment that bordered on riot seemed to approach me to her vices, and I eschewed it.
“Yet I could not live alone; so I tried the companionship of mistresses. The first I chose was Céline Varens – another of those steps which make a man spurn himself when he recalls them. You already know what she was, and how my liaison with her terminated. She had two successors: an Italian, Giacinta, and a German, Clara; both considered singularly handsome. What was their beauty to me in a few weeks? Giacinta was unprincipled and violent: I tired of her in three months. Clara was honest and quiet; but heavy, mindless, unimpressible: not one whit to my taste. I was glad to give her a sufficient sum to set her up in a good line of business, and so get decently rid of her. But, Jane, I see by your face you are not forming a very favourable opinion of me just now. You think me an unfeeling, loose-principled rake: don’t you?”
“I don’t like you so well as I have done sometimes, indeed, sir. Did it not seem to you in the least wrong to live in that way: first with one mistress and then another? You talk of it as a mere matter of course.”
“It was with me: and I did not like it. It was a grovelling fashion of existence: I should never like to return to it. Hiring a mistress is the next worst thing to buying a slave: both are often by nature, and always by position, inferior: and to live familiarly with inferiors is degrading. I now hate the recollection of the time I passed with Céline, Giacinta, and Clara.”
I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching that had ever been instilled into me as – under any pretext – with any justification – through any temptation – to become a successor of these poor girls, he would one day regard me with the same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory. I did not give utterance to this conviction: it was enough to feel it. I impressed it on my heart, that it might remain there to serve me as aid in the time of trial.

Because she’s still “beneath his station”, and after a while, he’d tire of her, too.

Then he proceeds to recount his meeting with her and subsequent relationship from his perspective (which doesn’t add very much context to the story).

“Don’t talk any more of those days, sir,” I interrupted, furtively dashing away some tears from my eyes; his language was torture to me; for I knew what I must do – and do soon – and all these reminiscences and these revelations of his feelings only made my work more difficult.
“No, Jane,” he returned: “what necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer – the Future so much brighter?”
I shuddered to hear the infatuated assertion.

cause he still thinks that convinced her

“You are my sympathy – my better self – my good angel – I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans on you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you – and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.
“It was because I felt and knew this that I resolved to marry you. To tell me that I had a wife already is empty mockery: you know now that I had but a hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I feared a stubbornness that exists in your character. I feared early instilled prejudice: I wanted to have you safe before hazarding your confidences. This was cowardly: I should have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first, as I so now – opened to you plainly my life of agony – described to you my hunger and thirst after a higher and worthier existence – shown to you, not my resolution (that word is weak), but my resistless bent to love faithfully and well where I am faithfully and well loved in return. Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge of fidelity, and to give me yours: Jane – give it me now.”

Because at the end of the day, he just thinks she can FIX him, but Jane knows she can’t.

“Jane, you understand what I want of you? Just this promise – ‘I will be yours, Mr. Rochester.'”
“Mr. Rochester, I will not be yours.”
Another long silence.
“Jane!” recommenced he, with a gentleness that broke me down with grief, and turned me stone-cold with an ominous terror – for this still voice was the pant of a lion rising – “Jane, do you mean to go one way in the world, and to let me go another?”
“I do.”
“Jane” (bending towards and embracing me), “do you mean it now?”
“I do.”
“And now?” softly kissing my forehead and cheek.
“I do” – extricating myself from restraint rapidly and completely.
“Oh, Jane, this is bitter! This- this is wicked. It would not be wicked to love me.”
“It would to obey you.”

She heard him out, but his story only made her more certain that she has to leave, for both their sakes.

A wild look raised his brows – crossed his features: he rose; but he forbore yet. I laid my hand on the back of a chair for support: I shook, I feared – but I was resolved.
“One instant, Jane. Give one glance at my horrible life when you are gone. All happiness will be torn away with you. What is left? For a wife I have but the maniac upstairs: as well might you refer me to some corpse in yonder churchyard. What shall I do, Jane? Where turn for a companion, and for some hope?”
“Do as I do: trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope we meet again there.”
“Then you will not yield?”
“No.”
“Then you condemn me to live wretched, and to die accursed?” His voice rose.
“I advise you to live sinless; and wish you to die tranquil.”
“Then you snatch love and innocence from me? You fling me back on lust for a passion – vice for an occupation?”
“Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for myself, We were born to strive and endure – you as well as I: do so. You will forget me before I forget you.”
“You make me a liar by such language: you sully my honour. I declared I could not change: you tell me to my face that I shall change soon. And what a distortion in your judgement, what a perversity in your ideas, proved by your conduct! Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law – no man being injured by the breach? for you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me.”

He first blamed his family, and now he’s trying to guilt trip Jane by claiming she’d be responsible for him returning to his old ways. If he’d just take responsibility for his own actions for once in his life, he might actually change!

[While] he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. “Oh, comply!” it said. “Think of his misery; think of his danger – look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair – soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?”
Still indominable was the reply – “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad – as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth – so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane – quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.”

In the end, she rejects him not for him (although she eventually concludes this will be better for both of them), but for herself, because she couldn’t live with herself otherwise.

Mr. Rochester, reading my countenance, saw I had done so. His fury was wrought to the highest: he must yield to it for a moment, whatever followed; he crossed the floor and seized my arm, and grasped my waist. He seemed to devour me with his flaming glance: physically, I felt, at the moment powerless as stubble exposed to the draught and glow of a furnace – mentally, I still possessed my soul, and with it the certainty of ultimate safety. The soul, fortunately, had an interpreter – often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter – in the eye. My eye rose to his; and while I looked in his fierce face, I gave an involuntary sigh: his grip was painful, and my overtasked strength almost exhausted.
“Never,” said he, as he ground his teeth, “never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!” (And he shook me with the force of his hold.) “I could bend her with my finger and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with more than courage – with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it – the savage, beautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit – with will and energy, virtue and purity – that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself, you could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you would: seized against your will you will elude my grasp like an essence – you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh! come, Jane, come!”
As he said this he released me from his clutch, and only looked at me. The look was far worse to resist than the frantic strain: only an idiot, however, would have succumbed now. I had dared and baffled his fury; I must elude his sorrow: I retired to the door.

But now that his fury’s spent, he tries coaxing her again.

“I am going, sir.”
“You are leaving me?”
“Yes.”
“You will not come? – You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? – My deep love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?”
What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard it was to reiterate firmly, “I am going.”
“Jane!”
“Mr. Rochester!”
“Withdraw, then, – I consent – but remember, you leave me here in anguish. Go up to your own room; think over all I have said, and, Jane, cast a glance on my sufferings – think of me.”
He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the safe. “Oh, Jane! my hope – my love – my life!” broke in anguish from his lips. Then came a deep, strong sob.
I had already gained the door: but, reader, I walked back – walked back as determinedly as I had retreated. I knelt down by him; I turned his face from the cushion to me; I kissed his cheek; I smoothed his hair with my hand.
“God bless you, my dear master!” I said. “God keep you from harm and wrong – direct you, solace you – reward you well for your past kindness to me.”
“Little Jane’s love would have been my best reward,” he answered: “without it, my heart is broken. But Jane will give me her love: yes – nobly, generously.”
Up the blood rushed to his face; forth flashed the fire from his eyes; erect he sprang; he held his arms out; but I evaded his embrace, and at one quitted the room.
“Farewell!” was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added, “Farewell, for ever!”

and who’s using tears now?

Anyhow, that night, she dreams of Gatehead, and a vision of what seems to be her mother.

It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my heart – “My daughter, flee temptation!”
“Mother, I will.”

She then proceeds to sneak out of the house with what money she has.

“Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax!” I whispered, as I glided past he door. “Farewell, my darling Adèle!” I said as I glanced towards the nursery. No thought could be admitted of entering to embrace her. I had to deceive a fine ear: for aught I knew, it might now be listening.
I would have got past Mr. Rochester’s chamber without a pause; but my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my feet was forced to stop also. No sleep was there: the inmate was walking restlessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed while I listened. There was a heaven – a temporary heaven – in this room for me, if I chose: I had but to go in and to say – “Mr. Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till death,” and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips. I thought of this.

But of course, she’s come this far already, so she successfully escapes. She walks the road away from Millcote until she reaches a coach, when she pays all the money she has to go far away to a place Mr. Rochester has no connections.

Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.

Until next time…