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Although it was Sunday, there were no more carriages waiting outside the hotel now than at the beginning of the season. The notary’s wife, in particular, had decided that it was not worth the expense of hiring one every time simply because she was not going to the Cambremers’, and simply stayed in her room.

“Is Mme Blandais not well?” her husband was asked. “We haven’t seen her all morning.”

“She has a slight headache—the heat, you know, this thundery weather. The least thing upsets her. But I expect you’ll see her this evening. I’ve told her she ought to come down. It can do her nothing but good.”

I had supposed that in thus inviting us to take tea with his aunt, whom I never doubted that he would have warned of our coming, M. de Charlus wished to make amends for the impoliteness which he had shown me during our walk that morning. But when, on our entering Mme de Villeparisis’s room, I attempted to greet her nephew, for all that I walked right round him while in shrill accents he was telling a somewhat spiteful story about one of his relatives, I could not succeed in catching his eye. I decided to say “Good evening” to him, and fairly loud, to warn him of my presence; but I realised that he had observed it, for before ever a word had passed my lips, just as I was beginning to bow to him, I saw his two fingers held out for me to shake without his having turned to look at me or paused in his story. He had evidently seen me, without letting it appear that he had, and I noticed then that his eyes, which were never fixed on the person to whom he was speaking, strayed perpetually in all directions, like those of certain frightened animals, or those of street hawkers who, while delivering their patter and displaying their illicit merchandise, keep a sharp look-out, though without turning their heads, on the different points of the horizon from which the police may appear at any moment. At the same time I was a little surprised to find that Mme de Villeparisis, while glad to see us, did not seem to have been expecting us, and I was still more surprised to hear M. de Charlus say to my grandmother: “Ah! what a capital idea of yours to come and pay us a visit! Charming of them, is it not, my dear aunt?” No doubt he had noticed his aunt’s surprise at our entry and thought, as a man accustomed to set the tone, that it would be enough to transform that surprise into joy were he to show that he himself felt it, that it was indeed the feeling which our arrival there ought to prompt. In which he calculated wisely; for Mme de Villeparisis, who had a high opinion of her nephew and knew how difficult it was to please him, appeared suddenly to have found new attractions in my grandmother and welcomed her with open arms. But I failed to understand how M. de Charlus could, in the space of a few hours, have forgotten the invitation—so curt but apparently so intentional, so premeditated—which he addressed to me that same morning, or why he called a “capital idea” on my grandmother’s part an idea that had been entirely his own. With a regard for accuracy which I retained until I had reached the age at which I realised that it is not by questioning him that one learns the truth of what another man has had in his mind, and that the risk of a misunderstanding which will probably pass unobserved is less than that which may come from a purblind insistence: “But, Monsieur,” I reminded him, “you remember, surely, that it was you who asked me if we would come round this evening?” Not a sound, not a movement betrayed that M. de Charles had so much as heard my question. Seeing which, I repeated it, like diplomats or like young men after a misunderstanding who endeavour, with untiring and unrewarded zeal, to obtain an explanation which their adversary is determined not to give them. Still M. de Charlus answered me not a word. I seemed to see hovering upon his lips the smile of those who from a great height pass judgment on the character and breeding