ght or observation was perceptible
in his features: his face was the face of an idiot.

Numerian, who had looked on him for an instant, shuddered and averted
his eyes, recoiling from the sight before him. But a more overpowering
trial of his resolution was approaching, which he could not avoid. Ere
long the voice of Ulpius grew audible once more; but now its tones were
weak, piteous, almost childish, and the words they uttered were quiet
words of love and gentleness, which dropping from such lips, and
pronounced in such a place, were fearful to hear. The temple and all
that was in it vanished from his sight as from his memory. Swayed by
the dread and supernatural influences of his disease, the madman passed
back in an instant over the dark valley of life's evil pilgrimage to
the long-quitted precincts of his boyish home. While in bodily
presence he stood in the place of his last crimes, the outcast of
reason and humanity, in mental consciousness he lay in his mother's
arms, as he had lain there ere yet he had departed to the temple at
Alexandria; and his heart communed with her heart, and his eyes looked
on her as they had looked before his father's fatal ambition had
separated for ever parent and child!

'Mother!--come back, mother!' he whispered. 'I was not asleep: I saw
you when you came in, and sat by my bedside, and wept over me when you
kissed me! Come back, and sit by me still! I am going away, far away,
and may never hear your voice again! How happy we should be, mother,
if I stayed with you always! But it is my father's will that I should
go to the temple in another country, and live there to be a priest; and
his will must be obeyed. I may never return; but we shall not forget
one another! I shall remember your words when we used to talk together
happily, and you shall still remember mine!'

Hardly had the first sentence been uttered by Ulpius when Antonina felt
her father's whole frame suddenly tremble at her side. She turned her
eyes from the doorway, on which they had hitherto been fixed, and
looked on him. 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 he