"She admits that she heard me ring, and then knock, that she knew it was
myself, that she wanted to see me," Swann thought to himself. "But that
doesn't correspond with the fact that she did not let me in."
He did not, however, draw her attention to this inconsistency, for he
thought that, if left to herself, Odette might perhaps produce some
falsehood which would give him a faint indication of the truth; she spoke;
he did not interrupt her, he gathered up, with an eager and sorrowful
piety, the words that fell from her lips, feeling (and rightly feeling,
since she was hiding the truth behind them as she spoke) that, like the
veil of a sanctuary, they kept a vague imprint, traced a faint outline of
that infinitely precious and, alas, undiscoverable truth;--what she had
been doing, that afternoon, at three o'clock, when he had called,--a truth
of which he would never possess any more than these falsifications,
illegible and divine traces, a truth which would exist henceforward only
in the secretive memory of this creature, who would contemplate it in
utter ignorance of its value, but would never yield it up to him.
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