Young John in Passing

He hurried on, head down, arms loose, legs stretched. Pressing through the corridor, he felt the artificial heat of the building suffocating him.

Where to go? Out into the fresh air, passed the smokers, into the sunshine. The frost settled past the weight of his hot breath and he felt an acute stinging on the walls of his nostrils. He much preffered the open air and the head ache it provided him to what he had met inside.

The worth of his words had faded in his memory but the weight of hers still cut him deeply. So deeply, at times, he could feel his body let his heart wander from it's home. In his chest, he felt her most.

But was he the perfect and Godly and blameless Jane or the sulking and hidden Rochester?

"Because," he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you — especially when you are near to me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly."