He chilled, though for a moment only, on meeting Dr. Cottard; for seeing
him close one eye with an ambiguous smile, before they had yet spoken to
one another (a grimace which Cottard styled "letting 'em all come"), Swann
supposed that the Doctor recognised him from having met him already
somewhere, probably in some house of 'ill-fame,' though these he himself
very rarely visited, never having made a habit of indulging in the
mercenary sort of love. Regarding such an allusion as in bad taste,
especially before Odette, whose opinion of himself it might easily alter
for the worse, Swann assumed his most icy manner. But when he learned that
the lady next to the Doctor was Mme. Cottard, he decided that so young a
husband would not deliberately, in his wife's hearing, have made any
allusion to amusements of that order, and so ceased to interpret the
Doctor's expression in the sense which he had at first suspected. The
painter at once invited Swann to visit his studio with Odette, and Swann
found him very pleasant. "Perhaps you will be more highly favoured than I
have been," Mme. Verdurin broke in, with mock resentment of the favour,
"perhaps you will be allowed to see Cottard's portrait" (for which she had
given the painter a commission).
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