Then I discovered that she had taken off her wedding ring.

I wondered what thought impelled her to do this, whether it was
coquetry or the same instinct which seemed to interpret the situation
at all times perfectly, though it never welled up into her
consciousness.

We sped northward all that morning, stopping at many little wayside
stations, and as we rushed along beside the ice-bound St. Francis the
air ever grew colder, and the land, deep in snow, and the tall pines,
white with frost, looked like a picture on a Christmas card.

At last the St. Lawrence appeared, covered with drifting floes; the
Isle of Orleans, with the Falls of Montmorency behind it; the ascending
heights which slope up to the Château Frontenac, the fort-crowned
citadel, the long parapet, bristling with guns.

Then, after the ferry had transferred us from Levis we stood in Lower
Quebec.

We had hardly gone on board the ferryboat when an incident occurred
that greatly disturbed me. A slightly built, well-dressed man, with a
small, upturned mustache and a face of notable pallor, passed and
repassed us several times, staring and smiling with cool effrontery at
both of us.

He wore a lambskin cap and a fur overcoat, and I could not help
associating him with the dead man, or avoiding the belief that he had
travelled north with us, and that Leroux had been to see him off at the