I think he left us alone together because he realized that we should get on better without a companion.

Mr. MacNairn sat down near me and began to talk about Muircarrie.  There were very few places like it, and he knew about each one of them.  He knew the kind of things Angus Macayre knew—­the things most people had either never heard of or had only thought of as legends.  He talked as he wrote, and I scarcely knew when he led me into talking also.  Afterward I realized that he had asked me questions I could not help answering because his eyes were drawing me on with that quiet, deep interest.  It seemed as if he saw something in my face which made him curious.

I think I saw this expression first when we began to speak of our meeting in the railway carriage, and I mentioned the poor little fair child my heart had ached so for.

“It was such a little thing and it did so want to comfort her!  Its white little clinging hands were so pathetic when they stroked and patted her,” I said.  “And she did not even look at it.”

He did not start, but he hesitated in a way which almost produced the effect of a start.  Long afterward I remembered it.

“The child!” he said.  “Yes.  But I was sitting on the other side.  And I was so absorbed in the poor mother that I am afraid I scarcely saw it.  Tell me about it.”

“It was not six years old, poor mite,” I answered.  “It was one of those very fair children one sees now and then.  It was not like its mother.  She was not one of the White People.”

“The White People?” he repeated quite slowly after me.  “You don’t mean that she was not a Caucasian?  Perhaps I don’t understand.”

That made me feel a trifle shy again.  Of course he could not know what I meant.  How silly of me to take it for granted that he would!

“I beg pardon.  I forgot,” I even stammered a little.  “It is only my way of thinking of those fair people one sees, those very fair ones, you know—­the ones whose fairness looks almost transparent.  There are not many of them, of course; but one can’t help noticing them when they pass in the street or come into a room.  You must have noticed them, too.  I always call them, to myself, the White People, because they are different from the rest of us.  The poor mother wasn’t one, but the child was.  Perhaps that was why I looked at it, at first.  It was such a lovely little thing; and the whiteness made it look delicate, and I could not help thinking—­” I hesitated, because it seemed almost unkind to finish.

“You thought that if she had just lost one child she ought to take more care of the other,” he ended for me.  There was a deep thoughtfulness in his look, as if he were watching me.  I wondered why.

“I wish I had paid more attention to the little creature,” he said, very gently.  “Did it cry?”