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

me so much support, is this:If the Republic really does good to

the poor, and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer

less, she may live a long time: she may even live to be old.”

“What then, my gentle sister?”

“Do you think”; the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so

much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and

tremble: “that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the

better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully

sheltered?”

“It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble

there.”

“You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you

now? Is the moment come?”

“Yes.”

She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each

other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing

worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She

goes next before himis gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-

Two.

“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that

believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and