and carry you--so dear, so generous, so good--down with me. GOD
bless you, GOD reward you! It is past.' He took her in his arms, as if
she had been his daughter.

'Always so much older, so much rougher, and so much less worthy, even
what I was must be dismissed by both of us, and you must see me only as
I am. I put this parting kiss upon your cheek, my child--who might have
been more near to me, who never could have been more dear--a ruined man
far removed from you, for ever separated from you, whose course is
run while yours is but beginning. I have not the courage to ask to be
forgotten by you in my humiliation; but I ask to be remembered only as I
am.'

The bell began to ring, warning visitors to depart. He took her mantle
from the wall, and tenderly wrapped it round her.

'One other word, my Little Dorrit. A hard one to me, but it is a
necessary one. The time when you and this prison had anything in common
has long gone by. Do you understand?'

'O! you will never say to me,' she cried, weeping bitterly, and holding
up her clasped hands in entreaty, 'that I am not to come back any more!
You will surely not desert me so!'

'I would say it, if I could; but I have not the courage quite to shut
out this dear face, and abandon all hope of its return. But do not come
soon, do not come often! This is now a tainted place, and I well know
the taint of it clings to me. You belong to much brighter and better
scenes. You are not to look back here, my Little Dorrit; you are to look
away to very different and much happier paths. Again, GOD bless you in
them! GOD reward you!'

Maggy, who had fallen into very low spirits, here cried, 'Oh get him
into a hospital; do get him into a hospital, Mother! He'll never look
like hisself again, if he an't got into a hospital. And then the little
woman as was always a spinning at her wheel, she can go to the cupboard
with the Princess, and say, what do you keep the Chicking there for? and
then they can take it out and give it to him, and then all be happy!'

The interruption was seasonable, for the bell had nearly rung itself
out. Again tenderly wrapping her mantle about her, and taking her on his
arm (though, but for her visit, he was almost too weak to walk), Arthur
led Little Dorrit down-stairs. She was the last visitor to pass out at
the Lodge, and the gate jarred heavily and hopelessly upon her.

With the funeral clang that it sounded into Arthur's heart, his sense of
weakness re