They walked along the quay and looked at the island of the Château d’If standing out grim in the middle of the moonlit harbour, turned up one of the short streets leading to the Rue de Rome, and so came into the Cannebière again. A table, just vacated on the outer edge of the terrace of one of the cafés, allured them. They sat down and ordered coffee. The little sentimental walk arm in arm had done much to dispose each kindly towards the other. Quixtus felt grateful for her rough yet subtle sympathy, Clementina appreciated his appreciation. The atmosphere of antagonism that had hitherto surrounded them had disappeared. For the first time since their arrival in Marseilles they talked on general topics. Almost for the first time in their lives they talked of general topics naturally, without constraint. Hitherto she had always kept an ear cocked for the pedant; he for the scoffer. She had been impatient of his quietism; he had nervously dreaded her brutality. Now a truce was declared. She forebore to jeer at his favourite pursuit, it not entering her head to do so; Quixtus, a man of breeding, never rode his hobby outside his ring, except in self-defence. They talked of music—a band was playing in the adjoining café. They discovered a common ground in Bach. Desultory talk led them to modern opera. There was a little haunting air, said he, in _Hans Joueur de Flûte_. “This?” cried Clementina, leaning across the table and humming it. “You’re the only English creature I’ve come across who has ever heard of it.” They talked of other things—of travel. Her tour through France was fresh in her mind. Sensitive artist, she was full of the architecture. Wherever she had gone, Quixtus had gone before her. To her after astonishment, for she was too much interested in the talk to consider it at the time, he met her sympathetically on every point. “The priceless treasures of France,” said he, “are the remains of expiring Gothic and the early Renaissance. Of the former you have the Palais de Justice at Rouen—which everybody knows—and the west front of the Cathedral at Vendôme.” “But I’ve just been to Vendôme!” cried Clementina. “That wonderful flamboyant window!” “The last word of Gothic,” said Quixtus. “The funeral pyre of Gothic—that tracery—the whole thing is on fire—it’s all leaping flame—as if some God had said ‘Let this noble thing that is dead have a stupendous end.’ Vendôme always seems to me like the end of the Viking. They sent the hero away to sea in a blaze of fire.” Richelieu, the little town not far from Tours where every one goes, yet so unknown—built by the great Cardinal for his court and to-day standing with hardly change of stick or stone, just as Richelieu left it, Quixtus had visited. “But that’s damnable!” cried Clementina. “I thought we had discovered it.” He laughed. “So did I. And I suppose everybody who goes there views it with the eyes of a little Columbus.” “What did you like best about it?”