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.

There was more in all that he heard than this.

The words seemed as words that had doomed him at once and for ever.