Perhaps she felt that such attempts would be bound to fail; perhaps,
indeed, she feared lest, merely by speaking of her to his friends, he
should provoke disclosures of an unwelcome kind. The fact remains that she
had consistently held him to his promise never to mention her name. Her
reason for not wishing to go into society was, she had told him, a quarrel
which she had had, long ago, with another girl, who had avenged herself by
saying nasty things about her. "But," Swann objected, "surely, people
don't all know your friend." "Yes, don't you see, it's like a spot of oil;
people are so horrid." Swann was unable, frankly, to appreciate this
point; on the other hand, he knew that such generalisations as "People are
so horrid," and "A word of scandal spreads like a spot of oil," were
generally accepted as true; there must, therefore, be cases to which they
were literally applicable. Could Odette's case be one of these? He teased
himself with the question, though not for long, for he too was subject to
that mental oppression which had so weighed upon his father, whenever he
was faced by a difficult problem.
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