straight to you. I should have done you more harm than good, at first;
for the prison was so familiar and yet so strange, and it brought back
so many remembrances of my poor father, and of you too, that at first
it overpowered me. But we went to Mr Chivery before we came to the gate,
and he brought us in, and got john's room for us--my poor old room, you
know--and we waited there a little. I brought the flowers to the door,
but you didn't hear me.' She looked something more womanly than when
she had gone away, and the ripening touch of the Italian sun was visible
upon her face. But, otherwise, she was quite unchanged. The same deep,
timid earnestness that he had always seen in her, and never without
emotion, he saw still. If it had a new meaning that smote him to the
heart, the change was in his perception, not in her.

She took off her old bonnet, hung it in the old place, and noiselessly
began, with Maggy's help, to make his room as fresh and neat as it could
be made, and to sprinkle it with a pleasant-smelling water. When that
was done, the basket, which was filled with grapes and other fruit,
was unpacked, and all its contents were quietly put away. When that was
done, a moment's whisper despatched Maggy to despatch somebody else to
fill the basket again; which soon came back replenished with new
stores, from which a present provision of cooling drink and jelly, and
a prospective supply of roast chicken and wine and water, were the first
extracts. These various arrangements completed, she took out her old
needle-case to make him a curtain for his window; and thus, with a quiet
reigning in the room, that seemed to diffuse itself through the else
noisy prison, he found himself composed in his chair, with Little Dorrit
working at his side.

To see the modest head again bent down over its task, and the nimble
fingers busy at their old work--though she was not so absorbed in it,
but that her compassionate eyes were often raised to his face, and, when
they drooped again had tears in them--to be so consoled and comforted,
and to believe that all the devotion of this great nature was turned to
him in his adversity to pour out its inexhaustible wealth of goodness
upon him, did not steady Clennam's trembling voice or hand, or
strengthen him in his weakness. Yet it inspired him with an inward
fortitude, that rose with his love. And how dearly he loved her now,
what words can tell!

As they sat side by side in the shadow of