Page 246 - swanns-way

for the whole day, had told me that I might stay out as late as
I pleased; and having gone as far as the Montjouvain pond,
where I enjoyed seeing again the reflection of the tiled roof
of the hut, I had lain down in the shade and gone to sleep
among the bushes on the steep slope that rose up behind
the house, just where I had waited for my parents, years be-
fore, one day when they had gone to call on M. Vinteuil. It
was almost dark when I awoke, and I wished to rise and go
away, but I saw Mile. Vinteuil (or thought, at least, that I
recognised her, for I had not seen her often at Combray, and
then only when she was still a child, whereas she was now
growing into a young woman), who probably had just come
in, standing in front of me, and only a few feet away from
me, in that room in which her father had entertained mine,
and which she had now made into a little sitting-room for
herself. The window was partly open; the lamp was lighted;
I could watch her every movement without her being able
to see me; but, had I gone away, I must have made a rus-
tling sound among the bushes, she would have heard me,
and might have thought that I had been hiding there in or-
der to spy upon her.
She was in deep mourning, for her father had but lately
died. We had not gone to see her; my mother had not cared
to go, on account of that virtue which alone in her fixed
any bounds to her benevolence—namely, modesty; but she
pitied the girl from the depths of her heart. My mother had
not forgotten the sad end of M. Vinteuil’s life, his complete
absorption, first in having to play both mother and nurs-
ery-maid to his daughter, and, later, in the suffering which

246 Swann’s Way