"Why do you want the rest?" she had asked him. "Our
little bit; that's all we need." He went farther; agonised by the
reflection, at the moment when it passed by him, so near and yet so
infinitely remote, that, while it was addressed to their ears, it knew
them not, he would regret, almost, that it had a meaning of its own, an
intrinsic and unalterable beauty, foreign to themselves, just as in the
jewels given to us, or even in the letters written to us by a woman with
whom we are in love, we find fault with the 'water' of a stone, or with
the words of a sentence because they are not fashioned exclusively from
the spirit of a fleeting intimacy and of a 'lass unparalleled.'
It would happen, as often as not, that he had stayed so long outside, with
his little girl, before going to the Verdurins' that, as soon as the
little phrase had been rendered by the pianist, Swann would discover that
it was almost time for Odette to go home. He used to take her back as far
as the door of her little house in the Rue La Perouse, behind the Arc de
Triomphe. And it was perhaps on this account, and so as not to demand the
monopoly of her favours, that he sacrificed the pleasure (not so essential
to his well-being) of seeing her earlier in the evening, of arriving with
her at the Verdurins', to the exercise of this other privilege, for which
she was grateful, of their leaving together; a privilege which he valued
all the more because, thanks to it, he had the feeling that no one else
would see her, no one would thrust himself between them, no one could
prevent him from remaining with her in spirit, after he had left her for
the night.
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