dge, a token of his love, which made even the
Verdurins and their little pianist think of Odette and, at the same
time, of himself--which bound her to him by a lasting tie; and at that
point he had (whimsically entreated by Odette) abandoned the idea of
getting some 'professional' to play over to him the whole sonata, of
which he still knew no more than this one passage. "Why do you want the
rest?" she had asked him. "Our little bit; that's all we need." He went
farther; agonised by the reflection, at the moment when it passed by
him, so near and yet so infinitely remote, that, while it was addressed
to their ears, it knew them not, he would regret, almost, that it had
a meaning of its own, an intrinsic and unalterable beauty, foreign to
themselves, just as in the jewels given to us, or even in the letters
written to us by a woman with whom we are in love, we find fault with
the 'water' of a stone, or with the words of a sentence because they are
not fashioned exclusively from the spirit of a fleeting intimacy and of
a 'lass unparalleled.'

It would happen, as often as not, that he had stayed so long outside,
with his little girl, before going to the Verdurins' that, as soon as
the little phrase had been rendered by the pianist, Swann would discover
that it was almost time for Odette to go home. He used to take her back
as far as the door of her little house in the Rue La Perouse, behind the
Arc de Triomphe. And it was perhaps on this account, and so as not to
demand the monopoly of her favours, that he sacrificed the pleasure (not
so essential to his well-being) of seeing her earlier in the evening,
of arriving with her at the Verdurins', to the exercise of this other
privilege, for which she was grateful, of their leaving together; a
privilege which he valued all the more because, thanks to it, he had
the feeling that no one else would see her, no one would thrust himself
between them, no one could prevent him from remaining with her in
spirit, after he had left her for the night.

And so, night after night, she would be taken home in Swann's carriage;
and one night, after she had got down, and while he stood at the gate
and murmured "Till to-morrow, then!" she turned impulsively from him,
plucked a last lingering chrysanthemum in the tiny garden which flanked
the pathway from the street to her house, and as he went back to his
carriage thrust it into his hand. He held it pressed to his lips during
the drive home, an