Swann's Way

this kiss of peace always annoyed my father, who thought such ceremonies
absurd, and she would have liked to try to induce me to outgrow the
need, the custom of having her there at all, which was a very different
thing from letting the custom grow up of my asking her for an additional
kiss when she was already crossing the threshold. And to see her look
displeased destroyed all the sense of tranquillity she had brought me a
moment before, when she bent her loving face down over my bed, and held
it out to me like a Host, for an act of Communion in which my lips might
drink deeply the sense of her real presence, and with it the power to
sleep. But those evenings on which Mamma stayed so short a time in
my room were sweet indeed compared to those on which we had guests
to dinner, and therefore she did not come at all. Our 'guests'
were practically limited to M. Swann, who, apart from a few passing
strangers, was almost the only person who ever came to the house at
Combray, sometimes to a neighbourly dinner (but less frequently since
his unfortunate marriage, as my family did not care to receive his wife)
and sometimes after dinner, uninvited. On those evenings when, as we sat