'Why do you weep to me about your broken lute?' answered Ulpius, with a dull, unmeaning smile; 'it was not I that destroyed it!' 'They have slain him!' she shrieked distractedly, heedless of the Pagan's reply. 'I saw them draw their swords on him! See, his blood is on me--me!--Antonina, whom he protected and loved! Look there; that is a grave--his grave--I know it! I have never seen him since; he is down--down there! under the flowers I grew to gather for him! They slew him; and when I knew it not, they have buried him!--or you--you have buried him! You have hidden him under the cold garden earth! He is gone!--Ah, gone, gone--for ever gone!' And she flung herself again with reckless violence on the grave. After looking steadfastly on her for a moment, Ulpius approached and raised her from the earth. 'Come!' he cried angrily, 'the night grows on--your father waits!' 'The walls of Rome shut me from my father! I shall never see my father nor Hermanric again!' she cried, in tones of bitter anguish, remembering more perfectly all the miseries of her position, and struggling to release herself from the Pagan's grasp. The walls of Rome! At those words the mind of Ulpius opened to a flow of dark remembrances, and lost the visions that had occupied it until that moment. He laughed triumphantly. 'The walls of Rome bow to my arm!' he cried, in exulting tones; 'I pierced them with my good bar of iron! I wound through them with my bright lantern! Spirits roared on me, and struck me down, and grinned upon me in the thick darkness, but I passed the wall! The thunder pealed around me as I crawled along the winding rifts; but I won my way through them! I came out conquering on the other side! Come, come, come, come! We will return! I know the track, even in the darkness! I can outwatch the sentinels! You shall walk in the pathway that I have broken through the bricks! The girl's features lost for a moment their expression of grief, and grew rigid with horror, as she glanced at his fiery eyes, and felt the fearful suspicion of his insanity darkening over her mind. She stood powerless, trembling, unresisting, in his grasp, without attempting to delude him into departure or to appease him into delay. 'Why did I make my passage through the wall?' muttered the Pagan in a low, awe-struck voice, suddenly checking himself, as he was about to step forward. 'Why did I tear down the strong brick-work and go forth into the dark suburbs?' He paused, and for a few moments struggled with his purposeless and disconnected thoughts; but a blank, a darkness, an annihilation overwhelmed Alaric and the Gothic camp, which he vainly endeavoured to disperse. He sighed bitterly to himself--'It is gone!' and still grasping Antonina by the hand, drew her after him to the garden gate. 'Leave me!' she shrieked, as he passed onward into the pathway that led to the high-road. 'Oh, be merciful, and leave me to die where he has died!'