her with her back to the crashing engine that constantly whirrs up
and falls, and she looks into his face and thanks him.
“But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I
am naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart; nor should I have
been able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that
we might have hope and comfort here today. I think you were sent
to me by Heaven.”
“Or you to me,” says Sydney Carton. “Keep your eyes upon me,
dear child, and mind no other object.”
“I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing
when I let it go, if they are rapid.”
“They will be rapid. Fear not!”
The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they
speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to
hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother,
else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark
highway, to repair home together, and to rest in her bosom.
“Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last
question? I am very ignorant, and it troubles mejust a little.”
“Tell me what it is.”
“I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself,
whom I love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she
lives in a farmer’s house in the south country. Poverty parted us,
and she knows nothing of my fatefor I cannot writeand if I
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
could, how should I tell her! It is better as it is.”
“Yes, yes, better as it is.”
“What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am
still thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives