me? I'm just going; we'll drive back together and you can drop me." It
was true that on one occasion Forcheville had asked to be driven home at
the same time, but when, on reaching Odette's gate, he had begged to be
allowed to come in too, she had replied, with a finger pointed at Swann:
"Ah! That depends on this gentleman. You must ask him. Very well, you
may come in, just for a minute, if you insist, but you mustn't stay
long, for, I warn you, he likes to sit and talk quietly with me, and
he's not at all pleased if I have visitors when he's here. Oh, if you
only knew the creature as I know him; isn't that so, my love, there's no
one that really knows you, is there, except me?"

And Swann was, perhaps, even more touched by the spectacle of her
addressing him thus, in front of Forcheville, not only in these tender
words of predilection, but also with certain criticisms, such as: "I
feel sure you haven't written yet to your friends, about dining with
them on Sunday. You needn't go if you don't want to, but you might at
least be polite," or "Now, have you left your essay on Vermeer here, so
that you can do a little more to it to-morrow? What a lazy-bones! I'm
going to make you work, I can tell you," which proved that Odette kept
herself in touch with his social engagements and his literary work, that
they had indeed a life in common. And as she spoke she bestowed on him a
smile which he interpreted as meaning that she was entirely his.

And then, while she was making them some orangeade, suddenly, just as
when the reflector of a lamp that is badly fitted begins by casting
all round an object, on the wall beyond it, huge and fantastic shadows
which, in time, contract and are lost in the shadow of the object
itself, all the terrible and disturbing ideas which he had formed of
Odette melted away and vanished in the charming creature who stood there
before his eyes. He had the sudden suspicion that this hour spent in
Odette's house, in the lamp-light, was, perhaps, after all, not an
artificial hour, invented for his special use (with the object of
concealing that frightening and delicious thing which was incessantly
in his thoughts without his ever being able to form a satisfactory
impression of it, an hour of Odette's real life, of her life when he was
not there, looking on) with theatrical properties and pasteboard fruits,
but was perhaps a genuine hour of Odette's life; that, if he himself
had not been there, she would ha