I hesitated, Frank was the only person I did not mind knowing. 'He did not come to bed last night.'

There was silence at the other end of the line, as though Frank was thinking hard for an answer.

'Oh,' he said at last, very slowly. 'Oh, I see,' and then, after a minute, 'I was afraid something like that would happen.'

'Frank,' I said desperately, 'what did he say last night when everyone had gone? What did you all do?'

'I had a sandwich with Giles and Mrs Lacy,' said Frank. 'Maxim did not come. He made some excuse and went into the library. I came back home almost at once. Perhaps Mrs Lacy can tell you.'

'She's gone,' I said, 'they went after breakfast. She sent up a note. She had not seen Maxim, she said.'

'Oh,' said Frank. I did not like it. I did not like the way he said it. It was sharp, ominous.

'Where do you think he's gone?' I said.

'I don't know,' said Frank; 'perhaps he's gone for a walk.' It was the sort of voice doctors used to relatives at a nursing-home when they came to inquire.

'Frank, I must see him,' I said. 'I've got to explain about last night.'

Frank did not answer. I could picture his anxious face, the lines on his forehead.

'Maxim thinks I did it on purpose," I said, my voice breaking in spite of myself, and the tears that had blinded me last night and I had not shed came coursing down my cheeks sixteen hours too late. 'Maxim thinks I did it as a joke, a beastly damnable joke!'

'No,' said Frank. 'No.'

'He does, I tell you. You didn't see his eyes, as I did. You didn't stand beside him all the evening, watching him, as I did. He didn't speak to me, Frank. He never looked at me again. We stood there together the whole evening and we never spoke to one another.'

'There was no chance,' said Frank. 'All those people. Of course I saw, don't you think I know Maxim well enough for that? Look here…'

'I don't blame him,' I interrupted. 'If he believes I played that vile hideous joke he has a right to think what he likes of me, and never talk to me again, never see me again.'

'You mustn't talk like that,' said Frank. 'You don't know what you're saying. Let me come up and see you. I think I can explain.'

What was the use of Frank coming to see me, and us sitting in the morning-room together, Frank smoothing me down, Frank being tactful, Frank being kind? I did not want kindness from anybody now. It was too late.

'No,' I said. 'No, I don't want to go over it and over it again. It's happened, it can't be altered now. Perhaps it's a good thing; it's made me realize something I ought to have known before, that I ought to have suspected when I married Maxim.'

'What do you mean?' said Frank.

His voice was sharp, queer. I wondered why it should matter to him about Maxim not loving me. Why did he not want me to know?

'About him and Rebecca,' I said, and as I said her name it sounded strange and sour like a forbidden word, a relief to me no longer, not a pleasure, but hot and shaming as a sin confessed.

Frank did not answer for a moment. I heard him draw in his breath at the other end of the wire.

'What do you mean?' he said again, shorter and sharper than before. 'What do you mean?'

'He doesn't love me, he loves Rebecca,' I said. 'He's never forgotten her, he thinks about her still, night and day. He's never loved me, Frank. It's always Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca.'

I heard Frank give a startled cry but I did not care how much I shocked him now. 'Now you know how I feel,' I said, 'now you understand.'

'Look here,' he said; 'I've got to come and see you, I've got to, do you hear? It's vitally important; I can't talk to you down the telephone. Mrs de Winter? Mrs de Winter?'

I slammed down the receiver, and got up from the writing-desk. I did not want to see Frank. He could not help me over this. No one could help me but myself. My face was red and blotchy from crying. I walked about the room biting the corner of my handkerchief, tearing at the edge.

The feeling was strong within me that I should never see Maxim again. It was certainty, born of some strange instinct. He had gone away and would not come back. I knew in my heart that Frank believed this too and would not admit it to me on the telephone. He did not want to frighten me. If I rang him up again at the office now I should find that he had gone. The clerk would say, 'Mr Crawley has just gone out, Mrs de Winter', and I could see Frank, hatless, climbing into his small, shabby Morris, driving off in search of Maxim.

I went and stared out of the window at the little clearing where the satyr played his pipes. The rhododendrons were all over now. They would not bloom again for another year. The tall shrubs looked dark and drab now that the colour had gone. A fog was rolling up from the sea, and I could not see the woods beyond the bank. It was very hot, very oppressive. I could imagine our guests of last night saying to one another, 'What a good thing this fog kept off for yesterday, we should never have seen the fireworks.' I went out of the morning-room and through the drawing-room to the terrace. The sun had gone in now behind a wall of mist. It was as though a blight had fallen upon Manderley taking the sky away and the light of the day. One of the gardeners passed me with a barrow full of bits of paper, and litter, and the skins of fruit left on the lawns by the people last night. 'Good morning,' I said. 'Good morning, Madam.'

'I'm afraid the ball last night has made a lot of work for you,' I said.

"That's all right, Madam,' he said. 'I think everyone enjoyed themselves good and hearty, and that's the main thing, isn't it?'

'Yes, I suppose so,' I said.

He looked across the lawns to the clearing in the woods where the valley sloped to the sea. The dark trees loomed thin and indistinct.

'It's coming up very thick,' he said.

'Yes,'I said.

'A good thing it wasn't like this last night,' he said.

'Yes,' I said.

He waited a moment, and then he touched his cap and went off trundling his barrow. I went across the lawns to the edge of the woods. The mist in the trees had turned to moisture and dripped upon my bare head like a thin rain. Jasper stood by my feet dejected, his tail downcast, his pink tongue hanging from his mouth. The clammy oppression of the day made him listless and heavy. I could hear the sea from where I stood, sullen and slow, as it broke in the coves below the woods. The white fog rolled on past me towards the house smelling of damp salt and seaweed. I put my hand on Jasper's coat. It was wringing wet. When I looked back at the house I could not see the chimneys or the contour of the walls, I could only see the vague substance of the house, the windows in the west wing, and the flower tubs on the terrace. The shutter had been pulled aside from the window of the large bedroom in the west wing, and someone was standing there, looking down upon the lawns. The figure was shadowy and indistinct and for one moment of shock and fear I believed it to be Maxim. Then the figure moved, I saw the arm reach up to fold the shutter, and I knew it was Mrs Danvers. She had been watching me as I stood at the edge of the woods bathed in that white wall of fog. She had seen me walk slowly from the terrace to the lawns. She may have listened to my conversation with Frank on the telephone from the connecting line in her own room. She would know that Maxim had not been with me last night. She would have heard my voice, known about my tears. She knew the part I had played through the long hours, standing by Maxim's side in my blue dress at the bottom of the stairs, and that he had not looked at me nor spoken to me. She knew because she had meant it to happen. This was her triumph, hers and Rebecca's.

I thought of her as I had seen her last night, watching me through the open door to the west wing, and that diabolical smile on her white skull's face, and I remembered that she was a living breathing woman like myself, she was made of flesh and blood. She was not dead, like Rebecca. I could speak to her, but I could not speak to Rebecca.

I walked back across the lawns on sudden impulse to the house. I went through the hall and up the great stairs, I turned in under the archway by the gallery, I passed through the door to the west wing, and so along the dark silent corridor to Rebecca's room. I turned the handle of the door and went inside.

Mrs Danvers was still standing by the window, and the shutter was folded back.

'Mrs Danvers,' I said. 'Mrs Danvers.' She turned to look at me, and I saw her eyes were red and swollen with crying, even as mine were, and there were dark shadows in her white face.

'What is it?' she said, and her voice was thick and muffled from the tears she had shed, even as mine had been.

I had not expected to find her so. I had pictured her smiling as she had smiled last night, cruel and evil. Now she was none of these things, she was an old woman who was ill and tired.

I hesitated, my hand still on the knob of the open door, and I did not know what to say to her now or what to do.

She went on staring at me with those red, swollen eyes and I could not answer her. 'I left the menu on the desk as usual,' she said. 'Do you want something changed?' Her words gave me courage, and I left the door and came to the middle of the room.

'Mrs Danvers,' I said. 'I have not come to talk about the menu. You know that, don't you?'

She did not answer me. Her left hand opened and shut.

'You've done what you wanted, haven't you?' I said, 'You meant this to happen, didn't you? Are you pleased now? are you happy?'

She turned her head away, and looked out of the window as she had done when I first came into the room. 'Why did you ever come here?' she said. 'Nobody wanted you at Manderley. We were all right until you came. Why did you not stay where you were out in France?'

'You seem to forget I love Mr de Winter,' I said.

'If you loved him you would never have married him,' she said.