`This is a strange chance that throws you and me together. This must be a strange night to you, standing alone here with your counterpart on these street stones?'

`I hardly seem yet,' returned Charles Darnay, `to belong to this world again.'

`I don't wonder at it; it's not so long since you were pretty far advanced on your way to another. You speak faintly.'

`I begin to think I am faint.'

`Then why the devil don't you dine? I dined, myself while those numskulls were deliberating which world you should belong to--this, or some other. Let me show you the nearest tavern to dine well at.'

Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgate-hill to Fleet-street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern. Here, they were shown into a little room, where Charles Darnay was soon recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine: while Carton sat opposite to him at the same table, with his separate bottle of port before him, and his fully half-insolent manner upon him.

`Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial scheme again, Mr. Darnay?'

`I am frightfully confused regarding time and' place; but I am so far mended as to feel that.'

`It must be an immense satisfaction!'

He said it bitterly, and filled up his glass again: which was a large one.

`As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget that I belong to it. It has no good in it for me--except wine like this--nor I for it. So we are not much alike in that particular. Indeed, I begin to think we are not much alike in any particular, you and I.'

Confused by the emotion of the day, and feeling his being there with this Double of coarse deportment, to be like a dream, Charles Darnay was at a loss how to answer; finally, answered not at all.

`Now your dinner is done,' Carton presently said, `why don't you call a health, Mr. Darnay; why don't you give your toast?'

`What health? What toast?'

`Why, it's on the tip of your tongue. It ought to be, it must be, I'll swear it's there.

`Miss Manette, then!'

`Miss Manette, then!'

Looking his companion full in the face while he drank the toast, Carton flung his glass over his shoulder against the wall, where it shivered to pieces; then, rang the bell, and ordered in another.

`That's a fair young lady to hand to a coach in the dark, Mr. Darnay!' he said, filling his new goblet.

A slight frown and a laconic `Yes,' were the answer.

`That's a fair young lady to be pitied by and wept for by! How does it feel? Is it worth being tried for one's life, to be the object of such sympathy and compassion, Mr. Darnay?'

Again Darnay answered not a word.