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.
I did not know what to say.
The situation was mad, unreal.
She kept talking in that choked muffled way with her head turned from me.
'I thought I hated you but I don't now,' she said; 'it seems to have spent itself, all the feeling I had.'
'Why should you hate me?' I asked; 'what have I ever done to you that you should hate me?'
'You tried to take Mrs de Winter's place,' she said.
Still she would not look at me.
She stood there sullen, her head turned from me.
'I had nothing changed,' I said.
'Manderley went on as it had always been.
I gave no orders, I left everything to you.
I would have been friends with you, if you had let me, but you set yourself against me from the first.
I saw it in your face, the moment I shook hands with you.'
She did not answer, and her hand kept opening and shutting against her dress.
'Many people marry twice, men and women,' I said.
'There are thousands of second marriages taking place every day.
You talk as though my marrying Mr de Winter was a crime, a sacrilege against the dead.