Swann's Way

her that pained expression, that plaintive voice, which seemed to falter
beneath the effort that she was forcing herself to make, and to plead
for pardon? He had an idea that it was not merely the truth about what
had occurred that afternoon that she was endeavouring to hide from him,
but something more immediate, something, possibly, which had not yet
happened, but might happen now at any time, and, when it did, would
throw a light upon that earlier event. At that moment, he heard the
front-door bell ring. Odette never stopped speaking, but her words
dwindled into an inarticulate moan. Her regret at not having seen Swann
that afternoon, at not having opened the door to him, had melted into a
universal despair.

He could hear the gate being closed, and the sound of a carriage, as
though some one were going away--probably the person whom Swann must on
no account meet--after being told that Odette was not at home. And then,
when he reflected that, merely by coming at an hour when he was not in
the habit of coming, he had managed to disturb so many arrangements of
which she did not wish him to know, he had a feeling of discouragement
that amounted, almost, to distress. But since he was in love with