Page 610 - swanns-way

of the life of the gods; casting, finally, on that ragged grass,
at the spot on which she stood (at once a scrap of withered
lawn and a moment in the afternoon of the fair player, who
continued to beat up and catch her shuttlecock until a gov-
erness, with a blue feather in her hat, had called her away)
a marvellous little band of light, of the colour of heliotrope,
spread over the lawn like a carpet on which I could not tire
of treading to and fro with lingering feet, nostalgic and pro-
fane, while Françoise shouted: ‘Come on, button up your
coat, look, and let’s get away!’ and I remarked for the first
time how common her speech was, and that she had, alas,
no blue feather in her hat.
Only, would she come again to the Champs-Elysées?
Next day she was not there; but I saw her on the following
days; I spent all my time revolving round the spot where she
was at play with her friends, to such effect that once, when,
they found, they were not enough to make up a prisoner’s
base, she sent one of them to ask me if I cared to complete
their side, and from that day I played with her whenever she
came. But this did not happen every day; there were days
when she had been prevented from coming by her lessons,
by her catechism, by a luncheon-party, by the whole of that
life, separated from my own, which twice only, condensed
into the name of Gilberte, I had felt pass so painfully close
to me, in the hawthorn lane near Combray and on the grass
of the Champs-Elysées. On such days she would have told
us beforehand that we should not see her; if it were because
of her lessons, she would say: ‘It is too tiresome, I sha’n’t be
able to come to-morrow; you will all be enjoying yourselves

610 Swann’s Way