I felt somehow as if her hands were wrung together in her lap.
"Oh!" she said, "if one only had some shadow of a proof that the mystery
is only that WE cannot see, that WE cannot hear, though they are really
quite near us, with us--the ones who seem to have gone away and whom we
feel we cannot live without. If once we could be sure! There would be no
Fear--there would be none!"
"Dearest"--he often called her "Dearest," and his voice had a wonderful
sound in the darkness; it was caress and strength, and it seemed to
speak to her of things they knew which I did not--"we have vowed to each
other that we WILL believe there is no reason for The Fear. It was a vow
between us."
"Yes! Yes!" she cried, breathlessly, "but sometimes,
Hector--sometimes--"
"Miss Muircarrie does not feel it--"
"Please say 'Ysobel'!" I broke in. "Please do."
He went on as quietly as if he had not even paused:
"Ysobel told me the first night we met that it seemed as if she could
not believe in it."
"It never seems real to me at all," I said. "Perhaps that is because I
can never forget what Jean told me about my mother lying still upon her
bed, and listening to some one calling her." (I had told them Jean's
story a few days before.) "I knew it was my father; Jean knew, too."
"How did you know?" Mrs. MacNairn's voice was almost a whisper.
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