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.
Thus she spoke:-- 'I swore to be avenged! while I went forth from Aquileia with the child that was killed and the child that was wounded; while I climbed the high wall in the night-time, and heard the tumult of the beating waves near the bank where I buried the dead; while I wandered in the darkness over the naked heath and through the lonely forest; while I climbed the pathless sides of the mountains, and made my refuge in the cavern by the waters of the dark lake.
'I swore to be avenged! while the warriors approached me on their march, and the roaring of the trumpets and the clash of the armour sounded in my ears; while I greeted my kinsman, Hermanric, a mighty chieftain, at the king's side, among the invading hosts; while I looked on my last child, dead like the rest, and knew that he was buried afar from the land of his people, and from the others that the Romans had slain before him.
'I swore to be avenged! while the army encamped before Rome, and I stood with Hermanric, looking on the great walls in the misty evening; while the daughter of the Roman was a prisoner in our tent, and I eyed her as she lay on my knees; while for her sake my kinsman turned traitor, and withheld my hand from the blow; while I passed unseen into the lonely farm-house to deal judgment on him with my knife; while I saw him die the death of a deserter at my feet, and knew that it was a Roman who had lured him from his people, and blinded him to the righteousness of revenge.
'I swore to be avenged! while I walked round the grave of the chieftain who was the last of my race; while I stood alone out of the army of my people in the city of the slayers of my babes; while I tracked the footsteps of the Roman who had twice escaped me, as she fled through the street; while I watched and was patient among the pillars of the temple, and waited till the sun went down, and the victim was unshielded for the moment to strike.
'I swore to be avenged! and my oath has been fulfilled--the knife that still bleeds drops with her blood; the chief vengeance has been wreaked! The rest that were to be slain remain for others, and not for me! For now I go to my husband and my children; now the hour is near at hand when I shall herd with their spirits in the Twilight World of Shadows, and make my long-abiding place with them in the Valley of Eternal Repose! The Destinies have willed it--it is enough!' Her voice trembled and grew faint as she pronounced the last words.
The anguish of the fastenings at her wrists was at last overpowering her senses--conquering, in spite of all resistance, her stubborn endurance.

For a little while yet she spoke at intervals, but her speech was fragmentary and incoherent.