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.