"_Why_ did you despise me? _Why_ did you betray your own heart, Cathy?... You loved me--then what _right_ had you to leave me?... Because misery and degradation and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, _you_, of your own will did it. I have not broken your heart--_you_ have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong." Charlotte Brontë tells us in _Jane Eyre_ she loved to imagine she and Mr. Rochester had met under happier conditions; and if the meeting of the runaway lovers Charlotte Brontë repeats so faithfully in _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ did not refer to a private meeting subsequent to the beginning of 1844, between her and M. Héger, or to their meeting again when she returned to Brussels the second time, then have we evidence of the fact that she at one time perhaps believed _Wuthering Heights_ would be never published. Assuredly nothing was sweeter to Currer Bell's fancy than a dream of the happiness that might have been hers, and well may she have written in the last sentences of _Villette_:-- Leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding life. Charlotte Brontë and M. Constantin Gilles Romain Héger loved each other as those who are worshippers of two high ideals, when one of these ideals is love, the other honour. And this was tragedy. To the agonizing nature of unrequitable affection endured for honour's sake do we owe Charlotte Brontë's _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_. CHAPTER XIV. THE RECOIL. I. The elements that conduce to reaction and recoil are sometimes fatal to the best proposed and ablest evolved schemes of man. Priests and counsellors may gravely devise; knight and maid may devoutly swear; the pious neophyte and the exalted religionist may make solemn pledge, but reaction often brings catastrophe. Thus the Christian Church is rightfully a watchful Body, a militant Force, preaches the weakness of man and cries "Ora continenter!" And herein lies the value of a ponderous state procedure. Irritating in its slow gravity and indifferent to the passionate appeals of emotionalism, such procedure yet withstands the backward wave which comes as answer to courageous but costly proposals.