Page 336 - swanns-way

‘Oh, that’s quite simple. I need only say that my dress
wasn’t ready, or that my cab came late. There is always some
excuse.’
‘How charming of you.’
But Swann said to himself that, if he could make Odette
feel (by consenting to meet her only after dinner) that there
were other pleasures which he preferred to that of her com-
pany, then the desire that she felt for his would be all the
longer in reaching the point of satiety. Besides, as he infinite-
ly preferred to Odette’s style of beauty that of a little working
girl, as fresh and plump as a rose, with whom he happened
to be simultaneously in love, he preferred to spend the first
part of the evening with her, knowing that he was sure to
see Odette later on. For the same reason, he would never al-
low Odette to call for him at his house, to take him on to the
Verdurins’. The little girl used to wait, not far from his door,
at a street corner; Rémi, his coachman, knew where to stop;
she would jump in beside him, and hold him in her arms
until the carriage drew up at the Verdurins’. He would enter
the drawing-room; and there, while Mme. Verdurin, point-
ing to the roses which he had sent her that morning, said:
‘I am furious with you!’ and sent him to the place kept for
him, by the side of Odette, the pianist would play to them—
for their two selves, and for no one else—that little phrase
by Vinteuil which was, so to speak, the national anthem of
their love. He began, always, with a sustained tremolo from
the violin part, which, for several bars, was unaccompa-
nied, and filled all the foreground; until suddenly it seemed
to be drawn aside, and—just as in those interiors by Pieter

336 Swann’s Way