garrulous tongue.... Have you no plan at all in your journey? 'Tis not
the dangers, but to me the endless restlessness of such a
venture--that 'Oh, where shall wisdom be found?'... Will you not
pause?--stay with us a few days to consider again this rash journey?
To each his world: it is surely perilous to transgress its fixed
boundaries."

"Who knows?" I cried, rather arrogantly perhaps. "The sorcery that
lured me hither may carry me as lightly back. But I have tasted honey
and covet the hive."

She glanced sidelong at me with that stealthy gravity that lay under
all her lightness.

"That delicious Rosinante!" she exclaimed softly.... "And I really
believe too _I_ must be the honey--or is it Mr. Rochester? Ah! Mr.
Brocken, they call it wasp-honey when it is so bitter that it blisters
the lips." She talked on gaily, as if she had forgotten I was but a
stranger until now. Yet none the less she perceived presently my eyes
ever and again fixed upon the little brooch of faintest gold hair at
her throat, and flinched and paled, playing on in silence.

"Take the whole past," she continued abruptly, "spread it out before
you, with all its just defeats, all its broken faith, and overweening
hopes, its beauty, and fear, and love, and its loss--its loss; then
turn and say: this, this only, this duller heart, these duller eyes,
this contumacious spirit is all that is left--myself. Oh! who could
wish to one so dear a destiny so dark?" She rose hastily from the
piano. "Did I hear Mr. Rochester's step by the window?" she said.