, as
they were heard in the vaulted interior of the little building,
strangely simple, attractive, and spiritual; the longer they were
listened to, the more completely did the mind lose the recollection of
their real origin, and gradually shape out of them wilder and wilder
fancies, until the bells as they rang their small peal seemed like
happy voices of a heavenly stream, borne lightly onward on its airy
bubbles, and ever rejoicing over the gliding current that murmured to
them as it ran.

Spite of the peril of her position, and of the terror which still fixed
her speechless and crouching on the ground, the effect on Antonina of
the strange mingled music of the running water and the bells was
powerful enough, when she first heard it, to suspend all her other
emotions in a momentary wonder and doubt. She withdrew her hands from
her face, and glanced round mechanically to the doorway, as if she
imagined that the sounds proceeded from the street.

When she looked, the declining sun, gliding between two of the outer
pillars which surrounded the temple, covered with a bright glow the
smooth pavement before the entrance. A swarm of insects flew drowsily
round and round in the warm mellow light; their faint monotonous
humming deepened, rather than interrupted, the perfect silence
prevailing over all things without.

But a change was soon destined to appear in the repose of the quiet,
vacant scene; hardly a minute had elapsed while Antonina still looked
on it before she saw stealing over the sunny pavement a dark shadow,
the same shadow that she had last beheld when she stopped in her flight
to look behind her in the empty street. At first it slowly grew and
lengthened, then it remained stationary, then it receded and vanished
as gradually as it had advanced, and then the girl heard, or fancied
that she heard, a faint sound of footsteps, retiring along the lateral
colonnades towards the river side of the building.

A low cry of horror burst from her lips as she sank back towards her
father; but it was unheeded. The voice of Ulpius had resumed in the
interval its hollow loudness of tone; he had raised Numerian from the
ground; his strong, cold grasp, which seemed to penetrate to the old
man's heart, which held him motionless and helpless as if by a fatal
spell, was on his arm.

'Hear it! hear it!' cried the Pagan, waving his disengaged hand as if
he were addressing a vast concourse of people--'I advance this man to