ur pleasures) reduced, if it did not altogether blind him to its
dimensions.

"Did you notice the face he pulled when he saw that she wasn't here?" M.
Verdurin asked his wife. "I think we may say that he's hooked."

"The face he pulled?" exploded Dr. Cottard who, having left the house
for a moment to visit a patient, had just returned to fetch his wife and
did not know whom they were discussing.

"D'you mean to say you didn't meet him on the doorstep--the loveliest of
Swanns?"

"No. M. Swann has been here?"

"Just for a moment. We had a glimpse of a Swann tremendously agitated.
In a state of nerves. You see, Odette had left."

"You mean to say that she has gone the 'whole hog' with him; that she
has 'burned her boats'?" inquired the Doctor cautiously, testing the
meaning of his phrases.

"Why, of course not; there's absolutely nothing in it; in fact, between
you and me, I think she's making a great mistake, and behaving like a
silly little fool, which she is, incidentally."

"Come, come, come!" said M. Verdurin, "How on earth do you know that
there's 'nothing in it'? We haven't been there to see, have we now?"

"She would have told me," answered Mme. Verdurin with dignity. "I may
say that she tells me everything. As she has no one else at present, I
told her that she ought to live with him. She makes out that she can't;
she admits, she was immensely attracted by him, at first; but he's
always shy with her, and that makes her shy with him. Besides, she
doesn't care for him in that way, she says; it's an ideal love,
'Platonic,' you know; she's afraid of rubbing the bloom off--oh, I don't
know half the things she says, how should I? And yet he's exactly the
sort of man she wants."

"I beg to differ from you," M. Verdurin courteously interrupted. "I am
only half satisfied with the gentleman. I feel that he 'poses.'"

Mme. Verdurin's whole body stiffened, her eyes stared blankly as though
she had suddenly been turned into a statue; a device by means of which
she might be supposed not to have caught the sound of that unutterable
word which seemed to imply that it was possible for people to 'pose'
in her house, and, therefore, that there were people in the world who
'mattered more' than herself.

"Anyhow, if there is nothing in it, I don't suppose it's because our
friend believes in her virtue. And yet, you never know; he seems to
believe in her intelligence. I don't know whether you heard the way he
lectured he