Page 351 - swanns-way

left the house for a moment to visit a patient, had just re-
turned to fetch his wife and did not know whom they were
discussing.
‘D’you mean to say you didn’t meet him on the door-
step—the loveliest of Swanns?’
‘No. M. Swann has been here?’
‘Just for a moment. We had a glimpse of a Swann tremen-
dously agitated. In a state of nerves. You see, Odette had
left.’
‘You mean to say that she has gone the ‘whole hog’ with
him; that she has ‘burned her boats’?’ inquired the Doctor
cautiously, testing the meaning of his phrases.
‘Why, of course not; there’s absolutely nothing in it;
in fact, between you and me, I think she’s making a great
mistake, and behaving like a silly little fool, which she is,
incidentally.’
‘Come, come, come!’ said M. Verdurin, ‘How on earth do
you know that there’s ‘nothing in it’? We haven’t been there
to see, have we now?’
‘She would have told me,’ answered Mme. Verdurin with
dignity. ‘I may say that she tells me everything. As she has
no one else at present, I told her that she ought to live with
him. She makes out that she can’t; she admits, she was im-
mensely attracted by him, at first; but he’s always shy with
her, and that makes her shy with him. Besides, she doesn’t
care for him in that way, she says; it’s an ideal love, ‘Platon-
ic,’ you know; she’s afraid of rubbing the bloom off—oh, I
don’t know half the things she says, how should I? And yet
he’s exactly the sort of man she wants.’

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