to talk for the first time of what she called The Fear.

I don't remember just how she began, and for a few minutes I did not
quite understand what she meant. But as she went on, and Mr. MacNairn
joined in the talk, their meaning became a clear thing to me, and I knew
that they were only talking quite simply of something they had often
talked of before. They were not as afraid of The Fear as most people
are, because they had thought of and reasoned about it so much, and
always calmly and with clear and open minds.

By The Fear they meant that mysterious horror most people feel at the
thought of passing out of the world they know into the one they don't
know at all.

How quiet, how still it was inside the walls of the old garden, as we
three sat under the boughs and talked about it! And what sweet night
scents of leaves and sleeping flowers were in every breath we drew! And
how one's heart moved and lifted when the nightingale broke out again!

"If one had seen or heard one little thing, if one's mortal being could
catch one glimpse of light in the dark," Mrs. MacNairn's low voice said
out of the shadow near me, "The Fear would be gone forever."

"Perhaps the whole mystery is as simple as this," said her son's voice
"as simple as this: that as there are tones of music too fine to be
registered by the human ear, so there may be vibrations of light not to
be seen by the human eye; form and color as well as sounds; just
beyond earthly perception, and yet as real as ourselves, as formed as
ourselves, only existing in that other dimension."