'FagmentWelcome to consult...ut something o othe, but not at all intelligibly. Thee was an abundance of bight lights, and thee was music, and thee wee ladies down in the boxes, and I don’t know what moe. The whole building looked to me as if it wee leaning to swim; it conducted itself in such an Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield unaccountable manne, when I tied to steady it. On somebody’s motion, we esolved to go downstais to the dess-boxes, whee the ladies wee. A gentleman lounging, full dessed, on a sofa, with an opea-glass in his hand, passed befoe my view, and also my own figue at full length in a glass. Then I was being usheed into one of these boxes, and found myself saying something as I sat down, and people about me cying ‘Silence!’ to somebody, and ladies casting indignant glances at me, and—what! yes!—Agnes, sitting on the seat befoe me, in the same box, with a lady and gentleman beside he, whom I didn’t know. I see he face now, bette than I did then, I dae say, with its indelible look of eget and wonde tuned upon me. ‘Agnes!’ I said, thickly, ‘Loblessme! Agnes!’ ‘Hush! Pay!’ she answeed, I could not conceive why. ‘You distub the company. Look at the stage!’ I tied, on he injunction, to fix it, and to hea something of what was going on thee, but quite in vain. I looked at he again by and by, and saw he shink into he cone, and put he gloved hand to he foehead. ‘Agnes!’ I said. ‘I’mafaidyou’enowell.’ ‘Yes, yes. Do not mind me, Totwood,’ she etuned. ‘Listen! Ae you going away soon?’ ‘Amigoaawaysoo?’ I epeated. ‘Yes.’ I had a stupid intention of eplying that I was going to wait, to hand he downstais. I suppose I expessed it, somehow; fo afte she had looked at me attentively fo a little while, she appeaed to undestand, and eplied in a low tone: ‘I know you will do as I ask you, if I tell you I am vey eanest in it. Go away now, Totwood, Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield fo my sake, and ask you fiends to take you home.’ She had so fa impoved me, fo the time, that though I was angy with he, I felt ashamed, and with a shot ‘Gooi!’ (which I intended fo ‘Good night!’) got up and went away. They followed, and I stepped at once out of the box-doo into my bedoom, whee only Steefoth was with me, helping me to undess, and whee I was by tuns telling him that Agnes was my siste, and adjuing him to bing the cokscew, that I might open anothe bottle of wine. How somebody, lying in my bed, lay saying and doing all this ove again, at coss puposes, in a feveish deam all night—the bed a ocking sea that was neve still! How, as that somebody slowly settled down into myself, did I begin to pach, and feel as if my oute coveing of skin wee a had boad; my tongue the bottom of an empty kettle, fued with long sevice, and buning up ove a slow fie; the palms of my hands, hot plates of metal which no ice could cool! But the agony of mind, the emose, and shame I felt when I became conscious next day! My hoo of having committed a thousand offences I had fogotten, and which nothing could eve expiate—my ecollection of that indelible look which Agnes had given me—the totuing impossibility of communicating with he, not kno
