eptible entity. You are a formless water that will trickle
down any slope that it may come upon, a fish devoid of memory, incapable
of thought, which all its life long in its aquarium will continue to
dash itself, a hundred times a day, against a wall of glass, always
mistaking it for water. Do you realise that your answer will have the
effect--I do not say of making me cease from that moment to love you,
that goes without saying, but of making you less attractive to my
eyes when I realise that you are not a person, that you are beneath
everything in the world and have not the intelligence to raise yourself
one inch higher? Obviously, I should have preferred to ask you, as
though it had been a matter of little or no importance, to give up your
_Nuit de Cleopatre_ (since you compel me to sully my lips with so abject
a name), in the hope that you would go to it none the less. But, since
I had resolved to weigh you in the balance, to make so grave an issue
depend upon your answer, I considered it more honourable to give you due
warning."

Meanwhile, Odette had shewn signs of increasing emotion and uncertainty.
Although the meaning of his tirade was beyond her, she grasped that it
was to be included among the scenes of reproach or supplication, scenes
which her familiarity with the ways of men enabled her, without paying
any heed to the words that were uttered, to conclude that men would not
make unless they were in love; that, from the moment when they were in
love, it was superfluous to obey them, since they would only be more in
love later on. And so, she would have heard Swann out with the utmost
tranquillity had she not noticed that it was growing late, and that if
he went on speaking for any length of time she would "never" as she told
him with a fond smile, obstinate but slightly abashed, "get there in
time for the Overture."

On other occasions he had assured himself that the one thing which,
more than anything else, would make him cease to love her, would be her
refusal to abandon the habit of lying. "Even from the point of view of
coquetry, pure and simple," he had told her, "can't you see how much
of your attraction you throw away when you stoop to lying? By a frank
admission--how many faults you might redeem! Really, you are far less
intelligent than I supposed!" In vain, however, did Swann expound to
her thus all the reasons that she had for not lying; they might have
succeeded in overthrowing any universal sy