I was in a kind of conscious catalepsy.

He was alarmed, terrified.

As he afterwards told me, he really believed me dead, and clasping me to him with an energy of which he was not aware, adjured me in the most tender and passionate manner to speak and tell him that I lived.
"Gabriella, my flower-girl, my darling!" he cried, pressing my cheek with those pure, despairing kisses with which love hallows death.

Had I indeed passed the boundaries of life, for my spirit alone was conscious of caresses, whose remembrance thrilled through my being.
The reaction was instantaneous.

The chilled blood grew warm and rushed through every vein with wild rapidity.