I'll call myself. Virginia!"
His call of Virginia was a call dictated by a dethroned mind. It was a sound that appeared to come from a mysterious vault. There was a kind of semi-wakefulness in it, like the utterance of a thought in a dream. It had a touch of pity. It was an inverted form of sound, that turned back whence it issued and fell dead where it was born, feeling that there was no reply for it to keep it alive. Yet, after a pause, he fancies he hears her answering; and he rapidly asks,—
"Is it a voice, or nothing, answers me?
I hear a sound so fine there's nothing lives
'Twixt it and silence."
And then, with an entranced listening, he follows the illusory voice around to different parts of the room, in the vain attempt to find its source. An apathetic stare, a blank, miserable stupor, succeeds, soon broken by the fancy that he hears her shrieking in the prison for rescue from Appius,—and he darts away. Appius, meanwhile, is planning an escape, and gloatingly counting over in imagination the victims he will pick out to expiate for his present shame, when the shattered Virginius, appalling even in his ruins, rushes in upon him, wildly crying, "Give me my daughter!" The affrighted prisoner replies,—
"I know nothing of her, Virginius, nothing.
Virginius. Do you tell me so?
Vile tyrant! Think you, shall I not believe
My own eyes before your tongue? Why, there she is!