when you see it. You do remember them, I know. It is not in your

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

nature to forget them.’” He was drawing his hand from his breast;

the prisoner chancing to look up in his hurried wonder as he

wrote, the hand stopped, closing upon something.

“Have you written “forget them’?” Carton asked.

“I have. Is that a weapon in your hand?”

“No; I am not armed.”

“What is it in your hand?”

“You shall know directly. Write on; there are but a few words

more.” He dictated again. “‘I am thankful that the time has come,

when I can prove them. That I do so is no subject for regret or

grief.’” As he said these words with his eyes fixed on the writer, his

hand slowly and softly moved down close to the writer’s face.

The pen dropped from Darnay’s fingers on the table, and he

looked about him vacantly.

“What vapour is that?” he asked.

“Vapour?”

“Something that crossed me?”

“I am conscious of nothing; there can be nothing here. Take up

the pen and finish. Hurry, hurry!”

As if his memory were impaired, or his faculties disordered, the

prisoner made an effort to rally his attention. As he looked at

Carton with clouded eyes and with an altered manner of

breathing, Cartonhis hand again in his breastlooked steadily

at him.

“Hurry, hurry!”

The prisoner bent over the paper, once more.