Swann's Way

shew that she did not wish any special attention, in a house to which
she had come by an act of condescension, to be paid to her superior
rank, she had entered the room with her arms pressed close to her sides,
even when there was no crowd to be squeezed through, no one attempting
to get past her; staying purposely at the back, with the air of being
in her proper place, like a king who stands in the waiting procession at
the doors of a theatre where the management have not been warned of his
coming; and strictly limiting her field of vision--so as not to seem to
be advertising her presence and claiming the consideration that was her
due--to the study of a pattern in the carpet or of her own skirt, she
stood there on the spot which had struck her as the most modest (and
from which, as she very well knew, a cry of rapture from Mme. de
Saint-Euverte would extricate her as soon as her presence there was
noticed), next to Mme. de Cambremer, whom, however, she did not know.
She observed the dumb-show by which her neighbour was expressing her
passion for music, but she refrained from copying it. This was not to
say that, for once that she had consented to spend a few minutes in Mme.