MacNairn actually said to me one day when we were sitting together
and she was holding my hand and softly, slowly patting it. She had a
way of doing that, and she had also a way of keeping me very near her
whenever she could. She said once that she liked to touch me now and
then to make sure that I was quite real and would not melt away. I did
not know then why she said it, but I understood afterward.
Sometimes we sat under the apple-tree until the long twilight deepened
into shadow, which closed round us, and a nightingale that lived in the
garden began to sing. We all three loved the nightingale, and felt as
though it knew that we were listening to it. It is a wonderful thing to
sit quite still listening to a bird singing in the dark, and to dare to
feel that while it sings it knows how your soul adores it. It is like a
kind of worship.
We had been sitting listening for quite a long time, and the nightingale
had just ceased and left the darkness an exquisite silence which fell
suddenly but softly as the last note dropped, when Mrs. MacNairn began
to talk for the first time of what she called The Fear.
I don't remember just how she began, and for a few minutes I did not
quite understand what she meant. But as she went on, and Mr. MacNairn
joined in the talk, their meaning became a clear thing to me, and I knew
that they were only talking quite simply of something they had often
talked of before.
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