Swann's Way

emerged, however, from this unexplored tract, certain occupations which
reappeared from time to time, vaguely connected by Odette with some
obligation towards distant relatives or old friends who, inasmuch as
they were the only people whom she was in the habit of mentioning
as preventing her from seeing him, seemed to Swann to compose the
necessary, unalterable setting of her life. Because of the tone in which
she referred, from time to time, to "the day when I go with my friend
to the Hippodrome," if, when he felt unwell and had thought, "Perhaps
Odette would be kind and come to see me," he remembered, suddenly, that
it was one of those very days, he would correct himself with an "Oh,
no! It's not worth while asking her to come; I should have thought of it
before, this is the day when she goes with her friend to the Hippodrome.
We must confine ourselves to what is possible; no use wasting our time
in proposing things that can't be accepted and are declined in
advance." And this duty that was incumbent upon Odette, of going to the
Hippodrome, to which Swann thus gave way, seemed to him to be not merely
ineluctable in itself; but the mark of necessity which stamped it seemed