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.