This part of the temple was enveloped in
total darkness--her assailant addressed not a word to her--she could not
obtain even a glimpse of his form, but she could hear him still laughing
to himself in hoarse, monotonous tones, that sounded now near, and now
distant again.
She abandoned herself as lost--prematurely devoted to the torment and
death that she had anticipated; but, as yet, her masculine resolution
and energy did not decline. The very intensity of the anguish she
suffered from the bindings at her wrists, producing a fierce bodily
effort to resist it, strengthened her iron-strung nerves. She neither
cried for help nor appealed to the Pagan for pity. The gloomy fatalism
which she had inherited from her savage ancestors sustained her in a
suicide-pride.
Ere long the laughter of Ulpius, while he moved slowly hither and
thither in the darkness of the temple, was overpowered by the sound of
her voice--deep, groaning, but yet steady--as she uttered her last
words--words poured forth like the wild dirges, the fierce death-songs
of the old Goths when they died deserted on the bloody battle-field, or
were cast bound into deep dungeons, a prey to the viper and the asp.
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