Swann's Way

whose medal, in gold, she always carried on her person, attributing
to it unlimited powers. She poured out Swann's tea, inquired "Lemon
or cream?" and, on his answering "Cream, please," went on, smiling, "A
cloud!" And as he pronounced it excellent, "You see, I know just how you
like it." This tea had indeed seemed to Swann, just as it seemed to
her, something precious, and love is so far obliged to find some
justification for itself, some guarantee of its duration in pleasures
which, on the contrary, would have no existence apart from love and must
cease with its passing, that when he left her, at seven o'clock, to go
and dress for the evening, all the way home, sitting bolt upright in
his brougham, unable to repress the happiness with which the afternoon's
adventure had filled him, he kept on repeating to himself: "What fun
it would be to have a little woman like that in a place where one could
always be certain of finding, what one never can be certain of finding,
a really good cup of tea." An hour or so later he received a note from
Odette, and at once recognised that florid handwriting, in which an
affectation of British stiffness imposed an apparent discipline upon its