As we stood in the midst of it together--Oh! how strange and beautiful
it was!--Mr. MacNairn came back. That was what it seemed to me--that he
came back. He stood quite still a moment and looked about him, and then
he stretched out his arms as I had stretched out mine. But he did it
slowly, and a light came into his face.
"If, after it was over, a man awakened as you said and found
himself--the self he knew, but light, free, splendid--remembering all
the ages of dark, unknowing dread, of horror of some black, aimless
plunge, and suddenly seeing all the childish uselessness of it--how he
would stand and smile! How he would stand and SMILE!"
Never had I understood anything more clearly than I understood then.
Yes, yes! That would be it. Remembering all the waste of fear, how he
would stand and SMILE!
He was smiling himself, the golden gorse about him already losing its
flame in the light returning mist-wraiths closing again over it, when I
heard a sound far away and high up the moor. It sounded like the playing
of a piper. He did not seem to notice it.
"We shall be shut in again," he said. "How mysterious it is, this
opening and closing! I like it more than anything else. Let us sit down,
Ysobel."
He spread the plaid we had brought to sit on, and laid on it the little
strapped basket Jean had made ready for us.
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