t might still be; I am
sure that you might be much, much worthier of yourself."

"Say of you, Miss Manette, and although I know better--although in the
mystery of my own wretched heart I know better--I shall never forget
it!"

She was pale and trembling. He came to her relief with a fixed despair
of himself which made the interview unlike any other that could have
been holden.

"If it had been possible, Miss Manette, that you could have returned the
love of the man you see before yourself--flung away, wasted, drunken,
poor creature of misuse as you know him to be--he would have been
conscious this day and hour, in spite of his happiness, that he would
bring you to misery, bring you to sorrow and repentance, blight you,
disgrace you, pull you down with him. I know very well that you can have
no tenderness for me; I ask for none; I am even thankful that it cannot
be."

"Without it, can I not save you, Mr. Carton? Can I not recall
you--forgive me again!--to a better course? Can I in no way repay your
confidence? I know this is a confidence," she modestly said, after a
little hesitation, and in earnest tears, "I know you would say this to
no one else. Can I turn it to no good account for yourself, Mr. Carton?"

He shook his head.

"To none. No, Miss Manette, to none. If you will hear me through a very
little more, all you can ever do for me is done. I wish you to know that
you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not
been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this
home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had
died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that
I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from
old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I
have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off
sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all
a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down,
but I wish you to know that you inspired it."

"Will nothing of it remain? O Mr. Carton, think again! Try again!"

"No, Miss Manette; all through it, I have known myself to be quite
undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the
weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me,
heap of ashes that I am, into fire--a fire, however, inseparable in
its nature from myself, q