Jane Eyre

"Has it other furniture of the same kind within?"

"I should think it may have:  I should hope -- better."

He spread the pictures before him, and again surveyed them alternately.

While he is so occupied, I will tell you, reader, what they are:
and first, I must premise that they are nothing wonderful.  The
subjects had, indeed, risen vividly on my mind.  As I saw them with
the spiritual eye, before I attempted to embody them, they were
striking; but my hand would not second my fancy, and in each case
it had wrought out but a pale portrait of the thing I had conceived.

These pictures were in water-colours.  The first represented clouds
low and livid, rolling over a swollen sea:  all the distance was
in eclipse; so, too, was the foreground; or rather, the nearest
billows, for there was no land.  One gleam of light lifted into
relief a half-submerged mast, on which sat a cormorant, dark and
large, with wings flecked with foam; its beak held a gold bracelet
set with gems, that I had touched with as brilliant tints as my
palette could yield, and as glittering distinctness as my pencil
could impart.  Sinking below the bird and mast, a drowned corpse
glanced through the green water; a fair arm was the only limb
clearly visible, whence the bracelet had been washed or torn.

The second picture contained for foreground only the dim peak
of a hill, with grass and some leaves slanting as if by a breeze.
Beyond and above spread an expanse of sky, dark blue as at twilight:
rising into the sky was a woman's shape to the bust, portrayed in
tints as dusk and soft as I could combine.  The dim forehead was
crowned with a star; the lineaments below were seen as through the
suffusion of vapour; the eyes shone dark and wild; the hair streamed
shadowy, like a beamless cloud torn by storm or by electric travail.
On the neck lay a pale reflection like moonlight; the same faint
lustre touched the train of thin clouds from which rose and bowed
this vision of the Evening Star.

The third showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter
sky:  a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close
serried, along the horizon.  Throwing these into distance, rose,
in the foreground, a head, -- a colossal head, inclined towards
the iceberg, and resting against it.  Two thin hands, joined under
the forehead, and supporting it, drew up before the lower features a
sable veil, a brow quite bloodless, white as bone, and an eye hollow
and fixed, blank of meaning but for the glassiness of despair, alone
were visible.  Above the temples, amidst wreathed turban folds of
black drapery, vague in its character and consistency as cloud,
gleamed a ring of white flame, gemmed with sparkles of a more lurid
tinge.  This pale crescent was "the likeness of a kingly crown;"
what it diademed was "the shape which shape had none."

"Were you happy when you painted these pictures?"  asked Mr.
Rochester presently.

"I was absorbed, sir:  yes, and I was happy.  To paint them, in
short, was to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known."

"That is not saying much.  Your pleasures, by your own account,
have been few; but I daresay you did exist in a kind of artist's
dreamland while you blent and arranged these strange tints.  Did
you sit at them long each day?"

"I had nothing else to do, because it was the vacation, and I sat
at them from morning till noon, and from noon till night:  the
length of the midsummer days favoured my inclination to apply."

"And you felt self-satisfied with the result of your ardent labours?"

"Far from it.  I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and
my handiwork:  in each case I had imagined something which I was
quite powerless to realise."

"Not quite:  you have secured the shadow of your thought; but no
more, probably.  You had not enough of the artist's skill and science
to give it full being:  yet the drawings are, for a school-girl,
peculiar.  As to the thoughts, they are elfish.  These eyes in the
Evening Star you must have seen in a dream.  How could you make
them look so clear, and yet not at all brilliant?  for the planet
above quells their rays.  And what meaning is that in their solemn
depth?  And who taught you to paint wind?  There is a high gale
in that sky, and on this hill-top.  Where did you see Latmos?  For
that is Latmos.  There!  put the drawings away!"

I had scarce tied the strings of the portfolio, when, looking
at his watch, he said abruptly -

"It is nine o'clock:  what are you about, Miss Eyre, to let Adele
sit up so long?  Take her to bed."

Adele went to kiss him before quitting the room:  he endured the
caress, but scarcely seemed to relish it more than Pilot would have
done, nor so much.

"I wish you all good-night, now," said he, making a movement of the
hand towards the door, in token that he was tired of our company,
and wished to dismiss us.  Mrs. Fairfax folded up her knitting:  I
took my portfolio:  we curtseyed to him, received a frigid bow in
return, and so withdrew.