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which he learned the ways of joining her there in the after-
noon, in the evening, even in the morning. The ways? More
than that, the authority, the right to join her. For, after all,
the time-table, and the trains themselves, were not meant
for dogs. If the public were carefully informed, by means of
printed advertisements, that at eight o’clock in the morning
a train started for Pierrefonds which arrived there at ten,
that could only be because going to Pierrefonds was a lawful
act, for which permission from Odette would be superflu-
ous; an act, moreover, which might be performed from a
motive altogether different from the desire to see Odette,
since persons who had never even heard of her performed
it daily, and in such numbers as justified the labour and ex-
pense of stoking the engines.
So it came to this; that she could not prevent him from
going to Pierrefonds if he chose to do so. Now that was pre-
cisely what he found that he did choose to do, and would at
that moment be doing were he, like the travelling public, not
acquainted with Odette. For a long time past he had wanted
to form a more definite impression of Viollet-le-Duc’s work
as a restorer. And the weather being what it was, he felt an
overwhelming desire to spend the day roaming in the forest
of Compiègne.
It was, indeed, a piece of bad luck that she had forbidden
him access to the one spot that tempted him to-day. To-day!
Why, if he went down there, in defiance of her prohibition,
he would be able to see her that very day! But then, whereas,
if she had met, at Pierrefonds, some one who did not matter,
she would have hailed him with obvious pleasure: ‘What,

454 Swann’s Way