dwelt in it so
long, he turned his face to the wall and sobbed aloud, "Oh, my Little
Dorrit!"

Wherever he looked he seemed to see her, and just as she herself in a
foreign country found herself looking and listening for his step and
voice, so, too, it was with him.

In the days that followed he thought of her all the while. He was too
depressed and too retiring and unhappy to mingle with the other
prisoners, so he kept his own room and made no friends. The rest
disliked him and said he was proud or sullen.

A burning, reckless mood soon added its sufferings to his dread and
hatred of the place. The thought grew on him that he would in the end
break his heart and die there. He felt that he was being stifled, and at
times the longing to be free made him believe he must go mad. A week of
this suffering found him in his bed in the grasp of a slow, wasting
fever. He felt light-headed and delirious, and heard tunes playing that
he knew were only in his brain.

One day when he had dragged himself to his chair by the window, the door
of his room seemed to open to a quiet figure, which dropped a mantle it
wore; then it seemed to be Little Dorrit in her old dress, and it seemed
first to smile and then to burst into tears.

He roused himself, and all at once he saw that it was no dream. She was
really there, kneeling by him now with her tears falling on his hands
and her voice crying, "Oh, my best friend! Don't let me see you weep! I
am your own poor child come back!"

No one had told her he was ill, for she had just returned from Italy.
She made the room fresh and neat, sewed a white curtain for its window,
and sent out for grapes, roast chicken and jellies, and every good
thing. She sat by him all day, smoothing his hot pillow or giving him a
cooling drink.

Though he had been strangely blind, he knew at last that she must have
loved him all along. And to find her great heart turned to him thus in
his misfortune made him realize that during all those months in the
lonely prison he had been loving her, too, though he had not known it.

A feeling of peace came to him. Whenever he opened his eyes he saw her
at his side--the same trusting Little Dorrit that he had always known.

V

"ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL"

All the while these things were happening, Mrs. Clennam and Flintwinch
had continued their grim partnership.

Mrs. Clennam at last decided to burn the part of the will she had
hidden, so that her share in th