The still, heavily-closed eyelids moved!—they quivered, opened, closed, then opened again. The eyes had a faint, dreaming, unconscious look; but Antonina lived! Antonina was awakened at last to another day on earth!
Her father's rigid, straining gaze still remained fixed upon her as at first, but on his countenance there was a blank, an absence of all appearance of sensation and life. The women, as they looked on Antonina and looked on him, began to weep; the child resumed very softly its morning song, now addressing it to the wounded girl and now to the dove.
At this moment Vetranio and the physician appeared on the scene. The latter advanced to the couch, removed the child from it, and examined Antonina intently. At length, partly addressing Numerian, partly speaking to himself, he said: 'She has slept long, deeply, without moving, almost without breathing—a sleep like death to all who looked on it.'
The old man spoke not in reply, but the women answered eagerly in the affirmative.
'She is saved,' pursued the physician, leisurely quitting the side of the couch and smiling on Vetranio; 'be careful of her for days and days to come.'
'Saved! saved!' echoed the child joyfully, setting the dove free in the room, and running to Numerian to climb on his knees. The father glanced down when the clear young voice sounded in his ear. The springs of joy, so long dried up in his heart, welled forth again as he saw the little hands raised towards him entreatingly; his grey head drooped—he wept.
At a sign from the physician the child was led from the room. The silence of deep and solemn emotion was preserved by all who remained; nothing was heard but the suppressed sobs of the old man, and the faint, retiring notes of the infant voice still singing its morning song. And now one word, joyfully reiterated again and again, made all the burden of the music—
'SAVED! SAVED!'