Page 578 - swanns-way

are having, for a place of this sort! I’m not boring you, am I;
or keeping you?’ ‘No, I’ve nothing to do, thank you. If you
bored me I should say so. But I love hearing you talk.’ ‘I am
highly flattered.... Aren’t we behaving prettily?’ he asked the
‘manageress,’ who had just looked in. ‘Why, yes, that’s just
what I was saying to myself, how sensibly they’re behaving!
But that’s how it is! People come to my house now, just to
talk. The Prince was telling me, only the other day, that he’s
far more comfortable here than with his wife. It seems that,
nowadays, all the society ladies are like that; a perfect scan-
dal, I call it. But I’ll leave you in peace now, I know when I’m
not wanted,’ she ended discreetly, and left Swann with the
girl who had the blue eyes. But presently he rose and said
good-bye to her. She had ceased to interest him. She did not
know Odette.
The painter having been ill, Dr. Cottard recommended
a sea-voyage; several of the ‘faithful’ spoke of accompany-
ing him; the Verdurins could not face the prospect of being
left alone in Paris, so first of all hired, and finally purchased
a yacht; thus Odette was constantly going on a cruise.
Whenever she had been away for any length of time, Swann
would feel that he was beginning to detach himself from
her, but, as though this moral distance were proportionate
to the physical distance between them, whenever he heard
that Odette had returned to Paris, he could not rest with-
out seeing her. Once, when they had gone away, as everyone
thought, for a month only, either they succumbed to a series
of temptations, or else M. Verdurin had cunningly arranged
everything beforehand, to please his wife, and disclosed his

578 Swann’s Way