I may never return; but we shall not forget one
another! I shall remember your words when we used to talk together
happily, and you shall still remember mine!'
Hardly had the first sentence been uttered by Ulpius when Antonina felt
her father's whole frame suddenly tremble at her side. She turned her
eyes from the doorway, on which they had hitherto been fixed, and looked
on him. The Pagan's hand had fallen from his arm: he was free to
depart, to fly as he had longed to fly but a few minutes before, and yet
he never stirred. His daughter touched him, spoke to him, but he
neither moved nor answered. It was not merely the shock of the abrupt
transition in the language of Ulpius from the ravings of crime to the
murmurs of love--it was not merely astonishment at hearing from him, in
his madness, revelations of his early life which had never passed his
lips during his days of treacherous servitude in the house on the
Pincian Hill, that thus filled Numerian's inmost soul with awe, and
struck his limbs motionless.
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