But the mere names of families whom
the Verdurins did not know were received by them in a reproachful silence.
M. Verdurin, dreading the painful impression which the mention of these
'bores,' especially when flung at her in this tactless fashion, and in
front of all the 'faithful,' was bound to make on his wife, cast a covert
glance at her, instinct with anxious solicitude. He saw then that in her
fixed resolution to take no notice, to have escaped contact, altogether,
with the news which had just been addressed to her, not merely to remain
dumb but to have been deaf as well, as we pretend to be when a friend who
has been in the wrong attempts to slip into his conversation some excuse
which we should appear to be accepting, should we appear to have heard it
without protesting, or when some one utters the name of an enemy, the very
mention of whom in our presence is forbidden; Mme. Verdurin, so that her
silence should have the appearance, not of consent but of the unconscious
silence which inanimate objects preserve, had suddenly emptied her face of
all life, of all mobility; her rounded forehead was nothing, now, but an
exquisite study in high relief, which the name of those La Tremoilles,
with whom Swann was always 'shut up,' had failed to penetrate; her nose,
just perceptibly wrinkled in a frown, exposed to view two dark cavities
that were, surely, modelled from life.
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