Page 418 - swanns-way

while he changed his clothes, he would be wondering, all
the time, about Odette, and in this way was never alone,
for the constant thought of Odette gave to the moments in
which he was separated from her the same peculiar charm
as to those in which she was at his side. He would get into
his carriage and drive off, but he knew that this thought had
jumped in after him and had settled down upon his knee,
like a pet animal which he might take everywhere, and
would keep with him at the dinner-table, unobserved by his
fellow-guests. He would stroke and fondle it, warm himself
with it, and, as a feeling of languor swept over him, would
give way to a slight shuddering movement which contracted
his throat and nostrils—a new experience, this,—as he fas-
tened the bunch of columbines in his buttonhole. He had
for some time been feeling neither well nor happy, especial-
ly since Odette had brought Forcheville to the Verdurins’,
and he would have liked to go away for a while to rest in the
country. But he could never summon up courage to leave
Paris, even for a day, while Odette was there. The weath-
er was warm; it was the finest part of the spring. And for
all that he was driving through a city of stone to immure
himself in a house without grass or garden, what was in-
cessantly before his eyes was a park which he owned, near
Combray, where, at four in the afternoon, before coming
to the asparagus-bed, thanks to the breeze that was wafted
across the fields from Méséglise, he could enjoy the fragrant
coolness of the air as well beneath an arbour of hornbeams
in the garden as by the bank of the pond, fringed with for-
get-me-not and iris; and where, when he sat down to dinner,

418 Swann’s Way