5).
Thus at this solemn point of time, when death is certainly in front, when she knows not whether God has inspired her or whether she has made of her own wish a deity, Clorinda utters the mystic word of vague compulsive feeling.
Erminia, taken captive by Tancredi after the siege of Antioch, is brought into her master's tent.

He treats her with chivalrous courtesy, and offers her a knight's protection: Allora un non so che soave e piano Sentii, ch'al cor mi scese, e vi s'affisse, Che, serpendomi poi per l'alma vaga, Non so come, divenne incendio e piaga (xix.

94).
At that moment, by the distillation of that vague emotion into vein and marrow, Erminia becomes Tancredi's slave, and her future is determined.
These examples are, perhaps, sufficient to show how Tasso, at the turning-points of destiny for his most cherished personages, invoked indefinite emotion to adumbrate the forces with which will contends in vain.

But the master phrase rings even yet more tyrannously in the passage of Clorinda's death, which sums up all of sentiment included in romance.

Long had Tancredi loved Clorinda.