Page 218 - swanns-way

expression, without appearing to have seen me, but with an
intensity, a half-hidden smile which I was unable to inter-
pret, according to the instruction I had received in the ways
of good breeding, save as a mark of infinite disgust; and her
hand, at the same time, sketched in the air an indelicate ges-
ture, for which, when it was addressed in public to a person
whom one did not know, the little dictionary of manners
which I carried in my mind supplied only one meaning,
namely, a deliberate insult.
‘Gilberte, come along; what are you doing?’ called out
in a piercing tone of authority a lady in white, whom I had
not seen until that moment, while, a little way beyond her,
a gentleman in a suit of linen ‘ducks,’ whom I did not know
either, stared at me with eyes which seemed to be starting
from his head; the little girl’s smile abruptly faded, and,
seizing her trowel, she made off without turning to look
again hi my direction, with an air of obedience, inscrutable
and sly.
And so was wafted to my ears the name of Gilberte, be-
stowed on me like a talisman which might, perhaps, enable
me some day to rediscover her whom its syllables had just
endowed with a definite personality, whereas, a moment
earlier, she had been only something vaguely seen. So it
came to me, uttered across the heads of the stocks and jas-
mines, pungent and cool as the drops which fell from the
green watering-pipe; impregnating and irradiating the zone
of pure air through which it had passed, which it set apart
and isolated from all other air, with the mystery of the life
of her whom its syllables designated to the happy creatures

218 Swann’s Way