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Round and round the temple, restless as a wild beast that is threatened in his lair, watchful as a lonely spirit in a city of strange tombs, wandered the solitary and brooding Ulpius. For him there was no rest of body no tranquility of mind.
His eyes wandered vacantly round the room, his hands closed trembling over his daughter's form; then, suddenly releasing her, he arose as one panic-stricken, and exclaiming, 'The doors must be secured Ulpius may be near the senator may return! endeavoured to cross the room.
All the poetry of the bold and beautiful superstition to which he was devoted flowed overwhelmingly into his young heart, absorbing the service of his fresh imagination, and transporting him incessantly from the vital realities of the outer world to the shadowy regions of aspiration and thought. But his duties did not entirely occupy the attention of Ulpius.
He still clasped Antonina to his side, but it was unconsciously. To all outward appearance he was helpless as his helpless child, when Ulpius slowly removed his grasp from their shoulders, separated them, and locking the hand of each in his cold, bony fingers, began to speak. His voice was deep and solemn, but his accents, in their hard, unvarying tone, seemed to express no human emotion.
Dragging Numerian after him to the left side of the recess, Ulpius drew back a sort of wooden shutter, and a vivid ray of sunlight immediately streamed in through a small circular opening pierced in this part of the temple.
The image of the god, with the three-headed monster encircled by a serpent, obedient beneath his hand, was carved over the portico. What flood of emotions rushed into the vacant mind of Ulpius at the instant when he discerned the long-loved, well-known image of the Egyptian god, there was nothing for some moments outwardly visible in him to betray.
Whether she strove to rise and continue her flight; whether she crouched down again under the portico, resigned for one bitter moment to perish by the knife of Goisvintha if Goisvintha were near; to fall once more into the hands of Ulpius if Ulpius were tracking her to her retreat, the crushing sense that she was utterly bereaved of her beloved protector that the friend of her brief days of happiness was lost to her for ever that Hermanric, who had preserved her from death, had been murdered in his youth and his strength by her side, never deserted her.
Just as he had gained the open air, the sentinel halted over the very spot where the Pagan stood, and paused suddenly in his song. There was an instant's interval of silence, during which the inmost soul of Ulpius quailed beneath an apprehension as vivid, as that which had throbbed in the heart of the despised lizard, whose flight had guided him to his discovery at the wall.
Indignation, but not despondency, filled the heart of Ulpius as he surveyed the situation of the Pagan world. A determination nourished as his had been by the reflections of years, and matured by incessant industry of deliberation, is above all those shocks which affect a hasty decision or destroy a wavering intention.
I wished to tell you this at your palace, but I heard there that you had gone to Aricia, and would return by way of the basilica; so I posted myself to intercept you thus. 'Industrious Ulpius! 'Remember your promise! Vetranio leaned forward to reply, but Ulpius was gone.
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