Page 352 - swanns-way

‘I beg to differ from you,’ M. Verdurin courteously inter-
rupted. ‘I am only half satisfied with the gentleman. I feel
that he ‘poses.’’
Mme. Verdurin’s whole body stiffened, her eyes stared
blankly as though she had suddenly been turned into a stat-
ue; a device by means of which she might be supposed not
to have caught the sound of that unutterable word which
seemed to imply that it was possible for people to ‘pose’
in her house, and, therefore, that there were people in the
world who ‘mattered more’ than herself.
‘Anyhow, if there is nothing in it, I don’t suppose it’s be-
cause our friend believes in her virtue. And yet, you never
know; he seems to believe in her intelligence. I don’t know
whether you heard the way he lectured her the other eve-
ning about Vinteuil’s sonata. I am devoted to Odette, but
really—to expound theories of aesthetic to her—the man
must be a prize idiot.’
‘Look here, I won’t have you saying nasty things about
Odette,’ broke in Mme. Verdurin in her ‘spoiled child’ man-
ner. ‘She is charming.’
‘There’s no reason why she shouldn’t be charming; we
are not saying anything nasty about her, only that she is not
the embodiment of either virtue or intellect. After all,’ he
turned to the painter, ‘does it matter so very much whether
she is virtuous or not? You can’t tell; she might be a great
deal less charming if she were.’
On the landing Swann had run into the Verdurins’ but-
ler, who had been somewhere else a moment earlier, when
he arrived, and who had been asked by Odette to tell Swann

352 Swann’s Way