alter me, she will have to see me more often." And so he was able to
trace, in these faults which she found in him, a proof at least of
her interest, perhaps even of her love; and, in fact, she gave him so
little, now, of the last, that he was obliged to regard as proofs of
her interest in him the various things which, every now and then, she
forbade him to do. One day she announced that she did not care for his
coachman, who, she thought, was perhaps setting Swann against her, and,
anyhow, did not shew that promptness and deference to Swann's orders
which she would have liked to see. She felt that he wanted to hear her
say: "Don't have him again when you come to me," just as he might have
wanted her to kiss him. So, being in a good temper, she said it; and he
was deeply moved. That evening, when talking to M. de Charlus, with whom
he had the satisfaction of being able to speak of her openly (for the
most trivial remarks that he uttered now, even to people who had never
heard of her, had always some sort of reference to Odette), he said to
him:

"I believe, all the same, that she loves me; she is so nice to me now,
and she certainly takes an interest in what I do."

And if, when he was starting off for her house, getting into his
carriage with a friend whom he was to drop somewhere on the way,
his friend said: "Hullo! that isn't Loredan on the box?" with what
melancholy joy would Swann answer him:

"Oh! Good heavens, no! I can tell you, I daren't take Loredan when I
go to the Rue La Perouse; Odette doesn't like me to have Loredan, she
thinks he doesn't suit me. What on earth is one to do? Women, you know,
women. My dear fellow, she would be furious. Oh, lord, yes; I've only to
take Remi there; I should never hear the last of it!"

These new manners, indifferent, listless, irritable, which Odette now
adopted with Swann, undoubtedly made him suffer; but he did not realise
how much he suffered; since it had been with a regular progression, day
after day, that Odette had chilled towards him, it was only by directly
contrasting what she was to-day with what she had been at first that he
could have measured the extent of the change that had taken place. Now
this change was his deep, his secret wound, which pained him day and
night, and whenever he felt that his thoughts were straying too near it,
he would quickly turn them into another channel for fear of being made
to suffer too keenly. He might say to himself in a vague