In spite of its banality as a pleasure resort there is a grim charm about St. Malo that is never quite forgotten by those who have once known it. It has an air of stability, of defiance. It is out of the reach of the improver, extender, and suburb-maker. Its great walls guard it as jealously on three sides as the sea does on the other. Almost alone of populous cities, it can never grow. As he left with the party to continue the tour Kent felt this charm, although his associations with the city had been of the lighter kind. They idled through the old towns: Dol, with its dark granite cathedral, looking rather hewn out of the rock than built; Dinan on its granite steep above the Rance, where the heart of du Guesclin is enshrined; Brieux, Paimpol, over which Pierre Loti has thrown the glamour of his sentiment; Morlaix, and so to Brest, with its great harbour and strong sea breeze from the Atlantic. For Kent this journey was an uninterrupted pleasure. No country is richer in things old, worn by weather and time, than Brittany: here an old chapel built of rough unhewn granite; here a shapeless wayside cross erected by some pious crusader on the ragged hill slope, railed round to prevent the encroachments of the broom and heather; here a Druidic mass of boulders; in the cottages curious smoke-dried strips of old Breton work, ancestral oak carvings, rude brass repousée platters--a thousand antiquarian interests in this gray land. But it is a bright one withal. The fields of yellow colza stretch over the landscape in broad patches of glory; the red-cheeked cider apples glow in the orchards. The chestnut-trees in the grounds of the old feudal château, its fleched gables dimly visible, hang gratefully over the high bounding wall, above the roadway. The peasants still wear the picturesque Breton dress, tasselled hats, embroidered short jackets, and knee-breeches for the men, great white caps and elaborate kirtles for the women. Along the coast the surf beats in a line of angry light upon the rocks, and shows white, in the midst of the blue, around the islets out at sea. And the old fishing villages look as if they were but flotsam and jetsam cast up by Providence around the gray, weather-worn church that has taken them to its bosom. For a few days after they left Dinan Kent noticed a change in Clytie. She was reserved, thoughtful. It was not until she appeared to have thrown off the weight of an obsessing idea that she grew buoyant and frank again. An incident unknown to him had occurred at Dinan, shaking the girl's heart to its depths. Her bedroom in the hotel opened, like the others on the same floor, on to a small balcony, the spaces in front of each room being separated by a light iron bar. She was dressing one morning when her attention was aroused by voices in the next room, near the balcony. Her own French window was open. The air was sunny and still, and the voices struck clear.