I sat on the floor at Maxim's feet, my head against his knees.
He ran his fingers through my hair.
Different from his old abstracted way.
It was not like stroking Jasper any more.
I felt his finger tips on the scalp of my head.
Sometimes he kissed me.
Sometimes he said things to me.
There were no shadows between us any more, and when we were silent it was because the silence came to us of our own asking.
I wondered how it was I could be so happy when our little world about us was so black.
It was a strange sort of happiness.
Not what I had dreamt about or expected.
It was not the sort of happiness I had imagined in the lonely hours.
There was nothing feverish or urgent about this.
It was a quiet, still happiness.
The library windows were open wide, and when we did not talk or touch one another we looked out at the dark dull sky.
It must have rained in the night, for when I woke the next morning, just after seven, and got up, and looked out of the window, I saw the roses in the garden below were folded and drooping, and the grass banks leading to the woods were wet and silver.
There was a little smell in the air of mist and damp, the smell that comes with the first fall of the leaf.
I wondered if autumn would come upon us two months before her time.
Maxim had not woken me when he got up at five.
He must have crept from his bed and gone through the bathroom to his dressing-room without a sound.
He would be down there now, in the bay, with Colonel Julyan, and Captain Searle, and the men from the lighter.
The lighter would be there, the crane and the chain, and Rebecca's boat coming to the surface.
I thought about it calmly, coolly, without feeling.
I pictured them all down there in the bay, and the little dark hull of the boat rising slowly to the surface, sodden, dripping, the grass-green seaweed and shells clinging to her sides.
When they lifted her on to the lighter the water would stream from her sides, back into the sea again.
The wood of the little boat would look soft and grey, pulpy in places.
She would smell of mud and rust, and that dark weed that grows deep beneath the sea beside rocks that are never uncovered.
Perhaps the name-board still hung upon her stern.
Je Reviens.
The lettering green and faded.
The nails rusted through.
And Rebecca herself was there, lying on the cabin floor.
I got up and had my bath and dressed, and went down to breakfast at nine o'clock as usual.
There were a lot of letters on my plate.
Letters from people thanking us for the dance.
I skimmed through them, I did not read them all.
Frith wanted to know whether to keep the breakfast hot for Maxim.
I told him I did not know when he would be back.
He had to go out very early, I said.
Frith did not say anything.
He looked very solemn, very grave.
I wondered again if he knew.
After breakfast I took my letters along to the morning-room.
The room smelt fusty, the windows had not been opened.
I flung them wide, letting in the cool fresh air.
The flowers on the mantelpiece were drooping, many of them dead.
The petals lay on the floor.
I rang the bell, and Maud, the under-house-maid, came into the room.
'This room has not been touched this morning,' I said, 'even the windows were shut.
And the flowers are dead.