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By Root 1317 0

he saw her very reproaches as proofs of her interest, perhaps of her love; and indeed she now gave him so few that he was obliged to regard as such the various prohibitions which she imposed on him from time to time. One day she announced that she did not care for his coachman, who, she thought, might be setting Swann against her, and anyhow did not show the promptness and deference to Swann’s orders which she would have liked to see. She felt that he wanted to hear her say: “Don’t take him again when you come to me,” just as he might have wanted her to kiss him. So, being in a good mood, she said it: and he was touched. That evening, talking to M. de Charlus, with whom he had the consolation of being able to speak of her openly (for the most trivial remarks that he uttered now, even to people who had never heard of her, always somehow related to Odette), he said to him: “I believe, all the same, that she loves me. She’s so nice to me, and she certainly takes an interest in what I do.”

And if, when he was setting off for her house, climbing into his carriage with a friend whom he was to drop somewhere on the way, his friend said: “Hullo! that isn’t Loredan on the box?” with what melancholy joy Swann would answer him:

“Oh! Good heavens, no! I can tell you, I daren’t take Loredan when I go to the Rue La Pérouse. Odette doesn’t like me to take Loredan, she doesn’t think he treats me properly. What on earth is one to do? Women, you know, women. My dear fellow, she’d be furious. Oh, lord, yes; if I took Rémi there I should never hear the last of it!”

This new manner, indifferent, offhand, irritable, which Odette now adopted with Swann, undoubtedly made him suffer; but he did not realise how much he suffered; since it was only gradually, day by day, that Odette had cooled towards him, it was only by directly contrasting what she was today with what she had been at first that he could have measured the extent of the change that had taken place. But this change was his deep, secret wound, which tormented him day and night, and whenever he felt that his thoughts were straying too near it, he would quickly turn them into another channel for fear of suffering too much. He might say to himself in an abstract way: “There was a time when Odette loved me more,” but he never formed any definite picture of that time. Just as he had in his study a chest of drawers which he contrived never to look at, which he made a detour to avoid whenever he went in or out of the room, because in one of its drawers he had locked away the chrysanthemum which she had given him on one of those first evenings when he had taken her home in his carriage, and the letters in which she said: “If only you had forgotten your heart also. I should never have let you have that back,” and “At whatever hour of the day or night you may need me, just send me a word, and dispose of me as you please,” so there was a place in his heart where he would never allow his thoughts to trespass, forcing them, if need be, into a long divagation so that they should not have to pass within reach of it; the place in which lingered his memory of happier days.

But his meticulous prudence was defeated one evening when he had gone out to a party.

It was at the Marquise de Saint-Euverte’s, the last, for that season, of the evenings on which she invited people to listen to the musicians who would serve, later on, for her charity concerts. Swann, who had intended to go to each of the previous evenings in turn but never succeeded in making up his mind, received, while he was dressing for this one, a visit from the Baron de Charlus, who came with an offer to accompany him to the party, if this would help him to feel a little less bored and unhappy when he got there. Swann thanked him and said:

“You can’t conceive how glad I should be of your company. But the greatest pleasure you can give me is to go instead to see Odette. You know what an excellent influence you have over her. I don’t suppose she’ll be going anywhere this evening before she goes to see her old dressmaker, and I’m sure she