“It was a low hill I stood on, and I was only on the side of it.  And in spite of the thrilling beauty of the moon, all but the part I stood on melted into soft, beautiful shadow, all below me and above me.  But I did not turn to look at or ask myself about anything.  You see the difficulty is that there are no earthly words to tell it!  All my being was ecstasy—­pure, light ecstasy!  Oh, what poor words—­ But I know no others.  If I said that I was happy—­happy!—­it would be nothing.  I was happiness itself, I was pure rapture!  I did not look at the beauty of the night, the sky, the marvelous melting shadow.  I was part of it all, one with it.  Nothing held me nothing!  The beauty of the night, the light, the air were what I was, and I was only thrilling ecstasy and wonder at the rapture of it.”

I stopped and covered my face with my hands, and tears wet my fingers.

“Oh, I cannot make it real!  I was only there such a short, short time.  Even if you had been with me I could not have found words for it, even then.  It was such a short time.  I only stood and lifted my face and felt the joy of it, the pure marvel of joy.  I only heard myself murmuring over and over again:  ’Oh, how beautiful! how beautiful!  Oh, how beautiful!’

“And then a marvel of new joy swept through me.  I said, very softly and very slowly, as if my voice were trailing away into silence:  ’Oh—­h!  I—­can—­lie—­down—­here—­on—­the grass—­and—­sleep . . . all—­through—­the night—­under—­this—­moonlight. . . .  I can sleep—­sleep—­’

“I began to sink softly down, with the heavenliest feeling of relaxation and repose, as if there existed only the soul of beautiful rest.  I sank so softly—­and just as my cheek almost touched the grass the dream was over!”

“Oh!” cried Mrs. MacNairn.  “Did you awaken?”

“No.  I came back.  In my sleep I suddenly found myself creeping into my bed again as if I had been away somewhere.  I was wondering why I was there, how I had left the hillside, when I had left it.  That part was a dream—­but the other was not.  I was allowed to go somewhere—­outside—­and come back.”

I caught at her hand in the dark.

“The words are all wrong,” I said.  “It is because we have no words to describe that.  But have I made you feel it at all?  Oh!  Mrs. MacNairn, have I been able to make you know that it was not a dream?”

She lifted my hand and pressed it passionately against her cheek, and her cheek, too, was wet—­wet.

“No, it was not a dream,” she said.  “You came back.  Thank God you came back, just to tell us that those who do not come back stand awakened in that ecstasy—­in that ecstasy.  And The Fear is nothing.  It is only The Dream.  The awakening is out on the hillside, out on the hillside!  Listen!” She started as she said it.  “Listen!  The nightingale is beginning again.”

He sent forth in the dark a fountain—­a rising, aspiring fountain—­of golden notes which seemed to reach heaven itself.  The night was made radiant by them.  He flung them upward like a shower of stars into the sky.  We sat and listened, almost holding our breath.  Oh! the nightingale! the nightingale!