I advanced, and after a moment’s pause, with the silver-broidered hem of the pall in my hands, I suddenly swept off that mantle of black cloth, setting up such a gust of wind as all but quenched the tapers.  I caught up the bench on which I had been sitting, and, dragging it forward, I mounted it and stood now with my breast on a level with the coffin-lid.  I laid hands on it and found it unfastened.  Without thought or care of how I went about the thing, I raised it and let it crash over to the ground.  It fell on the stone flags with a noise like that of thunder, which boomed and reverberated along the gloomy vault above.

A figure, all in purest white, lay there under my eyes, the face covered by a veil.  With deepest reverence, and a prayer to her sainted soul to forgive the desecration of my loving hands, I tremblingly drew that veil aside.  How beautiful she was in the calm peace of death!  She lay there like one gently sleeping, the faintest smile upon her lips, and as I looked it seemed hard to believe that she was truly dead.  Why, her lips had lost nothing of their colour; they were as rosy red—­or nearly so—­as ever I had seen them in life.  How could this be?  The lips of the dead are wont to put on a livid hue.  I stared a moment, my reverence and grief almost effaced by the intensity of my wonder.  This face, so ivory pale, wore not the ashen aspect of one that would never wake again.  There was a warmth about that pallor.  And then I caught my nether lip in my teeth until it bled, and it is a miracle that I did not scream, seeing how overwrought was my condition.

For it had seemed to me that the draperies on her bosom had slightly moved, a gentle, almost imperceptible heave as if she breathed.  I looked, and there it came again.

God! into what madness was I come that my eyes could so deceive me?  It was the draught that stirred the air about the church and blew great shrouds of wax adown the taper’s yellow sides.  I manned myself to a more sober mood, and looked again.

And now my doubts were all dispelled.  I knew that I had mastered any errant fancy, and that my eyes were grown wise and discriminating, and I knew, too, that she lived.  Her bosom slowly rose and fell; the colour of her lips, the hue of her cheeks confirmed the assurance that she breathed.  The poison had failed in its work.

I paused a second yet to ponder.  That morning her appearance had been such that the physician had been deceived by it, and had pronounced her cold.  Yet now there were these signs of life.  What could it portend but that the effects of the poison were passing off and that she was recovering?

In the wild madness of joy that sent the blood drumming and beating through my brain, my first impulse was to run for help.  Then I bethought me of the closed doors, and I realised that no matter how I shouted none would hear me.  I must succour her myself as best I could, and meanwhile she must be protected from the chill air of that December night in that church that was colder than the tomb.  I had my cloak, a heavy, serviceable garment; and if more were needed, there was the pall which I had removed, and which lay in a heap about the legs of my bench.