Page 456 - swanns-way

tic; down every ride of the forest, roseate with the deep and
tender glow of sunset;—innumerable and alternative hid-
ing-places, to which would fly simultaneously for refuge, in
the uncertain ubiquity of his hopes, his happy, vagabond
and divided heart. ‘We mustn’t, on any account,’ he would
warn M. de Forestelle, ‘run across Odette and the Verdurins.
I have just heard that they are at Pierrefonds, of all places,
to-day. One has plenty of time to see them in Paris; it would
hardly be worth while coming down here if one couldn’t go
a yard without meeting them.’ And his host would fail to
understand why, once they had reached the place, Swann
would change his plans twenty times in an hour, inspect the
dining-rooms of all the hotels in Compiègne without being
able to make up his mind to settle down in any of them, al-
though he had found no trace anywhere of the Verdurins,
seeming to be in search of what he had claimed to be most
anxious to avoid, and would in fact avoid, the moment he
found it, for if he had come upon the little ‘group,’ he would
have hastened away at once with studied indifference, satis-
fied that he had seen Odette and she him, especially that she
had seen him when he was not, apparently, thinking about
her. But no; she would guess at once that it was for her sake
that he had come there. And when M. de Forestelle came
to fetch him, and it was time to start, he excused himself:
‘No, I’m afraid not; I can’t go to Pierrefonds to-day. You see,
Odette is there.’ And Swann was happy in spite of every-
thing in feeling that if he, alone among mortals, had not the
right to go to Pierrefonds that day, it was because he was in
fact, for Odette, some one who differed from all other mor-

456 Swann’s Way