--or be thought to be--so difficult as to
oblige us to base our attack upon some unrehearsed incident in our
relations with them, as was originally for Swann the arrangement of the
cattleyas. He trembled as he hoped, that evening, (but Odette, he told
himself, if she were deceived by his stratagem, could not guess his
intention) that it was the possession of this woman that would emerge
for him from their large and richly coloured petals; and the pleasure
which he already felt, and which Odette tolerated, he thought, perhaps
only because she was not yet aware of it herself, seemed to him for that
reason--as it might have seemed to the first man when he enjoyed it amid
the flowers of the earthly paradise--a pleasure which had never before
existed, which he was striving now to create, a pleasure--and the
special name which he was to give to it preserved its identity--entirely
individual and new.

The ice once broken, every evening, when he had taken her home, he must
follow her into the house; and often she would come out again in her
dressing-gown, and escort him to his carriage, and would kiss him before
the eyes of his coachman, saying: "What on earth does it matter what
people see?" And on evenings when he did not go to the Verdurins' (which
happened occasionally, now that he had opportunities of meeting Odette
elsewhere), when--more and more rarely--he went into society, she would
beg him to come to her on his way home, however late he might be. The
season was spring, the nights clear and frosty. He would come away from
an evening party, jump into his victoria, spread a rug over his knees,
tell the friends who were leaving at the same time, and who insisted on
his going home with them, that he could not, that he was not going
in their direction; then the coachman would start off at a fast trot
without further orders, knowing quite well where he had to go. His
friends would be left marvelling, and, as a matter of fact, Swann was
no longer the same man. No one ever received a letter from him now
demanding an introduction to a woman. He had ceased to pay any attention
to women, and kept away from the places in which they were ordinarily to
be met. In a restaurant, or in the country, his manner was deliberately
and directly the opposite of that by which, only a few days earlier,
his friends would have recognised him, that manner which had seemed
permanently and unalterably his own. To such an extent does passion
manifest