Here I am looking at the piece of curtain, and Maxim is kissing me.
For the first time he is telling me he loves me.'
Then he stopped suddenly, he pushed me away from him, and got up from the window-seat.
'You see, I was right,' he said.
'It's too late.
You don't love me now.
Why should you?'
He went and stood over by the mantelpiece.
'We'll forget that,' he said, 'it won't happen again.'
Realisation flooded me at once, and my heart jumped in quick and sudden panic.
'It's not too late,' I said swiftly, getting up from the floor and going to him, putting my arms about him; 'you're not to say that, you don't understand.
I love you more than anything in the world.
But when you kissed me just now I felt stunned and shaken. I could not feel anything. I could not grasp anything.
It was just as though I had no more feeling left in me at all.'
'You don't love me,' he said, 'that's why you did not feel anything.
I know.
I understand.
It's come too late for you, hasn't it?'
'No,' I said.
"This ought to have happened four months ago,' he said.
'I should have known.
Women are not like men.'
'I want you to kiss me again," I said; 'please, Maxim.'
'No,' he said, 'it's no use now.'
'We can't lose each other now,' I said.
'We've got to be together always, with no secrets, no shadows.
Please, darling, please.'
"There's no time,' he said.
'We may only have a few hours, a few days.
How can we be together now that this has happened?
I've told you they've found the boat.
They've found Rebecca.'
I stared at him stupidly, not understanding.
'What will they do?' I said.
"They'll identify her body,' he said, 'there's everything to tell them, there in the cabin. The clothes she had, the shoes, the rings on her fingers.
They'll identify her body; and then they will remember the other one, the woman buried up there, in the crypt.'
'What are you going to do?' I whispered.
'I don't know,' he said.
'I don't know.'
The feeling was coming back to me, little by little, as I knew it would.
My hands were cold no longer. They were clammy, warm.
I felt a wave of colour come into my face, my throat.
My cheeks were burning hot.
I thought of Captain Searle, the diver, the Lloyd's agent, all those men on the stranded ship leaning against the side, staring down into the water.
I thought of the shopkeepers in Kerrith, of errand boys whistling in the street, of the vicar walking out of church, of Lady Crowan cutting roses in her garden, of the woman in the pink dress and her little boy on the cliffs.
Soon they would know.
In a few hours.
By breakfast time tomorrow.
'They've found Mrs de Winter's boat, and they say there is a body in the cabin.'
A body in the cabin.