For the moment I was too much astonished by the suddenness of her supplicating action to move or speak.

As soon as I recovered myself I attempted to fondle and console her, but she shrunk from my embrace, and seemed inclined to escape from me again; until I touched once more the strings of the lute, and then she uttered a subdued exclamation of delight, nestled close up to me, and looked into my face with such a strange expression of mingled adoration and rapture, that I declare to you, Julia, I felt as bashful before her as a boy.' 'You bashful! The Senator Vetranio bashful!' exclaimed Julia, looking up with an expression of the most unfeigned incredulity and astonishment.
'The lute,' pursued Vetranio gravely, without heeding the interruption, 'was my sole means of procuring any communication with her.

If I ceased playing, we were as strangers; if I resumed, we were as friends.
So, subduing the notes of the instrument while she spoke to me in a soft tremulous musical voice, I still continued to play.

By this plan I discovered at our first interview that she was the daughter of one Numerian, that she was on the point of completing her fourteenth year, and that she was called Antonina.

I had only succeeded in gaining this mere outline of her story, when, as if struck by some sudden apprehension, she tore herself from me with a look of the utmost terror, and entreating me not to follow her if I ever desired to see her again, she disappeared rapidly among the trees.' 'More and more wonderful! And, in your new character of a bashful man, you doubtless obeyed her injunctions ?' 'I did,' replied the senator; 'but the next evening I revisited the garden grove, and, as soon as I struck the chords, as if by magic, she again approached.