Повесть о двух городах / A Tale of Two Cities

’

�Who are you?’

Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on the bench beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A strange thrill struck him when she did so, and visibly passed over his frame; he laid the knife down softly, as he sat staring at her.

Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushed aside, and fell down over her neck. Advancing his hand by little and little, he took it up and looked at it. In the midst of the action he went astray, and, with another deep sigh, fell to work at his shoemaking.

But not for long. Releasing his arm, she laid her hand upon his shoulder. After looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if to be sure that it was really there, he laid down his work, put his hand to his neck, and took off a blackened string with a scrap of folded rag attached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his knee, and it contained a very little quantity of hair: not more than one or two long golden hairs, which he had, in some old day, wound off upon his finger.

He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. �It is the same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!’

As the concentrated expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to become conscious that it was in hers too. He turned her full to the light, and looked at her.

�She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned out – she had a fear of my going, though I had none – and when I was brought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve.

�You will leave me them? They can never help me to escape in the body, though they may in the spirit.’ Those were the words I said. I remember them very well.’

He formed this speech with his lips many times before he could utter it. But when he did find spoken words for it, they came to him coherently, though slowly.

�How was this? – Was it you?’

Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with a frightful suddenness.

But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and only said, in a low voice, �I entreat you, good gentlemen, do not come near us, do not speak, do not move!’

�Hark!’ he exclaimed. �Whose voice was that?’

His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and went up to his white hair, which they tore in a frenzy.