I looked at my watch.
'I haven't time,' I told him.
'I ought to be in the office now, changing the reservations.'
'Never mind about that, I've got to talk to you,' he said.
We walked down the corridor and he rang for the lift.
He can't realise, I thought, that.the early train leaves in about an hour and a half.
Mrs Van Hopper will ring up the office, in a moment, and ask if I am there.
We went down in the lift, not talking, and so out to the terrace, where the tables were laid for breakfast.
'What are you going to have?' he said.
'I've had mine already,' I told him, 'and I can only stay four minutes anyway.'
'Bring me coffee, a boiled egg, toast, marmalade, and a tangerine,' he said to the waiter.
And he took an emery board out of his pocket and began filing his nails.
'So Mrs Van Hopper has had enough of Monte Carlo,' he said, 'and now she wants to go home.
So do I.
She to New York and I to Manderley.
Which would you prefer?
You can take your choice.'
'Don't make a joke about it; it's unfair,' I said; 'and I think I had better see about those tickets, and say goodbye now.'
'If you think I'm one of the people who try to be funny at breakfast you're wrong,' he said.
'I'm invariably ill-tempered in the early morning.
I repeat to you, the choice is open to you.
Either you go to America with Mrs Van Hopper or you come home to Manderley with me.'
'Do you mean you want a secretary or something?'
'No, I'm asking you to marry me, you little fool.'
The waiter came with the breakfast, and I sat with my hands in my lap, watching while he put down the pot of coffee and the jug of milk.
'You don't understand,' I said, when the waiter had gone; 'I'm not the sort of person men marry.'
'What the devil do you mean?' he said, staring at me, laying down his spoon.
I watched a fly settle on the marmalade, and he brushed it away impatiently.
'I'm not sure,' I said slowly. 'I don't think I know how to explain.
I don't belong to your sort of world for one thing.'
'What is my world?'
'Well — Manderley.
You know what I mean.'
He picked up his spoon again and helped himself to marmalade.
'You are almost as ignorant as Mrs Van Hopper, and just as unintelligent.
What do you know of Manderley?
I'm the person to judge that, whether you would belong there or not.
You think I ask you this on the spur of the moment, don't you?
Because you say you don't want to go to New York.
You think I ask you to marry me for the same reason you believed I drove you about in the car, yes, and gave you dinner that first evening.
To be kind.
Don't you?'
'Yes,' I said
'One day,' he went on, spreading his toast thick, 'you may realise that philanthropy is not my strongest quality.
At the moment I don't think you realise anything at all.
You haven't answered my question.
Are you going to marry me?'
I don't believe, even in my fiercest moments, I had considered this possibility.
I had once, when driving with him and we had been silent for many miles, started a rambling story in my head about him being very ill, delirious I think, and sending for me and I having to nurse him.
I had reached the point in my story where I was putting eau-de-Cologne on his head when we arrived at the hotel, and so it finished there.