Here she stopped for a moment, as if about to speak once more; but her emotions overpowered her.

From the sources which despair and suffering had dried up, the long-prisoned tears once more flowed forth at the bidding of gratitude and hope.

She looked upon the senator, silent as himself, and her expression at that instant was destined to remain on his memory while memory survived.
Then, with faltering and hasty steps, she departed by the way she had come; and in the great palace, which his evil supremacy over the wills of others had made a hideous charnel-house, he was once more left alone.
He made no effort to follow or detain her as she left him.

The torch still smouldered beside him on the floor, but he never stooped to take it up; he dropped down on a vacant couch, stupefied by what he had beheld.

That which no entreaties, no threats, no fierce violence of opposition could have effected in him, the appearance of Antonina had produced--it had forced him to pause at the very moment of the execution of his deadly design.
He remembered how, from the very first day when he had seen her, she had mysteriously influenced the whole progress of his life; how his ardour to possess her had altered his occupations, and even interrupted his amusements; how all his energy and all his wealth had been baffled in the attempt to discover her when she fled from her father's house; how the first feeling of remorse that he had ever known had been awakened within him by his knowledge of the share he had had in producing her unhappy fate.