A pale wistfulness took possession of her, a quietness and gentleness of demeanor which was new and strange to her. More than once in their rambles about the quaint old city Hartley had surprised her looking at him out of troubled and tearful eyes, with an indefinite, dumb entreaty on her quivering under-lip. And each time he caught that passing look it touched him and intangibly drew him closer to her. She felt the necessity of having him to lean upon, the want of his arm and voice and presence. And some passionate dread of the solitude she felt ominously before her drove Cordelia still closer and still more desperately to his side. This was not lost on Hartley himself. Those sorrowing eyes seemed to trumpet to the knight that lay dormant in him; and if he said little at the time, he nevertheless felt much. With the birth of this tenderer feeling came a newer and deeper trust in her, a less active quest of motive and meaning in all her acts. Though he knew, indeed, that she was still holding back something from him, he made no effort to wring a reluctant statement from her. He was willing to wait her time. She had given him much; the little he could and would not claim. In the meanwhile, with the sense of something slipping between their fingers, and with a premonition of impending change hanging over both of them, they made the most of those passing days. Mrs. Spaulding did not care to take part in their wanderings, and it was only during their hours at the hotel that the shadow of her presence fell between them. More than one happy day they spent in visits to the Basilica, to the old Citadel fortress, to the ancient ruins of the Château Bigot in the valley of the St. Charles. They idled away a merry forenoon in search of the Golden Dog, and when that strange figure in gilt was found at last, on the northern façade of the post-office, Hartley put its still stranger rhyme into English for her. For many an hour, too, they rambled about the crooked little streets of the lower town, which Hartley declared to be wondrously like a second Dieppe or Amiens. And they went on long walks out upon the Plains of Abraham, and visited the tall shaft which marks the spot where Wolfe died victorious. "How sad it seems," said Cordelia, "to die on the day, in the very hour, that life has grown most worth living!" She gazed up at the ironical towering marble with musing eyes. "But isn't it better it should come even in that last moment, than never at all?" Hartley asked, looking up to where her own eyes rested, and himself busy, for the moment, with his own thoughts. "It may be!" said Cordelia, looking from the marble to the man. "It may be!" she repeated absently.