"
"And then, besides, there's yourself----" he had continued, "I know what
women are; you must have a whole heap of things to do, and never any time
to spare."
"I? Why, I have never anything to do. I am always free, and I always will
be free if you want me. At whatever hour of the day or night it may suit
you to see me, just send for me, and I shall be only too delighted to
come. Will you do that? Do you know what I should really like--to
introduce you to Mme. Verdurin, where I go every evening. Just fancy my
finding you there, and thinking that it was a little for my sake that you
had gone."
No doubt, in thus remembering their conversations, in thinking about her
thus when he was alone, he did no more than call her image into being
among those of countless other women in his romantic dreams; but if,
thanks to some accidental circumstance (or even perhaps without that
assistance, for the circumstance which presents itself at the moment when
a mental state, hitherto latent, makes itself felt, may well have had no
influence whatsoever upon that state), the image of Odette de Crecy came
to absorb the whole of his dreams, if from those dreams the memory of her
could no longer be eliminated, then her bodily imperfections would no
longer be of the least importance, nor would the conformity of her body,
more or less than any other, to the requirements of Swann's taste; since,
having become the body of her whom he loved, it must henceforth be the
only one capable of causing him joy or anguish.
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