“He knows,” Hector MacNairn’s low voice said, “that it was not a dream.”

When there was silence again I heard him leave his chair very quietly.

“Good night! good night!” he said, and went away.  I felt somehow that he had left us together for a purpose, but, oh, I did not even remotely dream what the purpose was!  But soon she told me, almost in a whisper.

“We love you very much, Ysobel,” she said.  “You know that?”

“I love you both, with all my heart,” I answered.  “Indeed I love you.”

“We two have been more to each other than mere mother and son.  We have been sufficient for each other.  But he began to love you that first day when he watched you in the railway carriage.  He says it was the far look in your eyes which drew him.”

“I began to love him, too,” I said.  And I was not at all ashamed or shy in saying it.

“We three might have spent our lives together,” she went on.  “It would have been a perfect thing.  But—­but—­” She stood up as if she could not remain seated.  Involuntarily I stood up with her.  She was trembling, and she caught and held me in her arms.  “He cannot stay, Ysobel,” she ended.

I could scarcely hear my own voice when I echoed the words.

“He cannot—­stay?”

“Oh! the time will come,” she said, “when people who love each other will not be separated, when on this very earth there will be no pain, no grief, no age, no death—­when all the world has learned the Law at last.  But we have not learned it yet.  And here we stand!  The greatest specialists have told us.  There is some fatal flaw in his heart.  At any moment, when he is talking to us, when he is at his work, when he is asleep, he may—­cease.  It will just be ceasing.  At any moment.  He cannot stay.”

My own heart stood still for a second.  Then there rose before me slowly, but clearly, a vision—­the vision which was not a dream.

“Out on the hillside,” I murmured.  “Out on the hillside.”

I clung to her with both arms and held her tight.  I understood now why they had talked about The Fear.  These two who were almost one soul were trying to believe that they were not really to be torn apart—­not really.  They were trying to heap up for themselves proof that they might still be near each other.  And, above all, his effort was to save her from the worst, worst woe.  And I understood, too, why something wiser and stronger than myself had led me to tell the dream which was not a dream at all.

But it was as she said; the world had not learned the Secret yet.  And there we stood.  We did not cry or talk, but we clung to each other—­we clung.  That is all human creatures can do until the Secret is known.  And as we clung the nightingale broke out again.

“O nightingale!  O nightingale!” she said in her low wonder of a voice.  “What are you trying to tell us!”

CHAPTER VIII