Besides,
as he infinitely preferred to Odette's style of beauty that of a little
working girl, as fresh and plump as a rose, with whom he happened to be
simultaneously in love, he preferred to spend the first part of the
evening with her, knowing that he was sure to see Odette later on. For the
same reason, he would never allow Odette to call for him at his house, to
take him on to the Verdurins'. The little girl used to wait, not far from
his door, at a street corner; Remi, his coachman, knew where to stop; she
would jump in beside him, and hold him in her arms until the carriage drew
up at the Verdurins'. He would enter the drawing-room; and there, while
Mme. Verdurin, pointing to the roses which he had sent her that morning,
said: "I am furious with you!" and sent him to the place kept for him, by
the side of Odette, the pianist would play to them--for their two selves,
and for no one else--that little phrase by Vinteuil which was, so to
speak, the national anthem of their love. He began, always, with a
sustained tremolo from the violin part, which, for several bars, was
unaccompanied, and filled all the foreground; until suddenly it seemed to
be drawn aside, and--just as in those interiors by Pieter de Hooch, where
the subject is set back a long way through the narrow framework of a
half-opened door--infinitely remote, in colour quite different, velvety
with the radiance of some intervening light, the little phrase appeared,
dancing, pastoral, interpolated, episodic, belonging to another world.
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