Page 250 - swanns-way

have uttered with sincerity sounded unreal in her own
mouth. And what little she allowed herself to say was said
in a strained tone, in which her ingrained timidity paraly-
sed her tendency to freedom and audacity of speech; while
she kept on interrupting herself with: ‘You’re sure you aren’t
cold? You aren’t too hot? You don’t want to sit and read by
yourself?...
‘Your ladyship’s thoughts seem to be rather ‘warm’
this evening,’ she concluded, doubtless repeating a phrase
which she had heard used, on some earlier occasion, by her
friend.
In the V-shaped opening of her crape bodice Mlle. Vin-
teuil felt the sting of her friend’s sudden kiss; she gave a little
scream and ran away; and then they began to chase one an-
other about the room, scrambling over the furniture, their
wide sleeves fluttering like wings, clucking and crowing like
a pair of amorous fowls. At last Mlle. Vinteuil fell down ex-
hausted upon the sofa, where she was screened from me by
the stooping body of her friend. But the latter now had her
back turned to the little table on which the old music-mas-
ter’s portrait had been arranged. Mlle. Vinteuil realised that
her friend would not see it unless her attention were drawn
to it, and so exclaimed, as if she herself had just noticed it
for the first time: ‘Oh! there’s my father’s picture looking at
us; I can’t think who can have put it there; I’m sure I’ve told
them twenty times, that is not the proper place for it.’
I remembered the words that M. Vinteuil had used to
my parents in apologising for an obtrusive sheet of music.
This photograph was, of course, in common use in their rit-

250 Swann’s Way