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He unshaded his face after a little while, and spoke steadily. `Don't be afraid to hear me. Don't shrink from anything
I say. I am like one who died young. All my life might have been.'
`No, Mr. Carton. I am sure that the best part of it 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 I'
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 you--self-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 he.'
`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 knob 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, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away.'
`Since it is my misfortune, Mr. Carton, to have more unhappy than you were before you knew me--
`Don't say that, Miss Manette, for you would have reclaimed me, if anything could. You will not be the cause of my becoming worse.'
`Since the state of your mind that you describe, is, at all events, attributable to some influence of mine--this is what I mean, if I can make it plain--can I use no influence to serve you? Have I no power for good, with you, at all?'
`The utmost good that I am capable of now, Miss Manette, I have come here to realise. Let me carry through the rest of my misdirected life, the remembrance that I opened my heart to you, last of all the world; and that there was something left in me at this time which you could deplore and pity.'
