"
Mme. Verdurin, seeing that Swann was within earshot, assumed that
expression in which the two-fold desire to make the speaker be quiet and
to preserve, oneself, an appearance of guilelessness in the eyes of the
listener, is neutralised in an intense vacuity; in which the unflinching
signs of intelligent complicity are overlaid by the smiles of innocence,
an expression invariably adopted by anyone who has noticed a blunder, the
enormity of which is thereby at once revealed if not to those who have
made it, at any rate to him in whose hearing it ought not to have been
made. Odette seemed suddenly to be in despair, as though she had decided
not to struggle any longer against the crushing difficulties of life, and
Swann was anxiously counting the minutes that still separated him from the
point at which, after leaving the restaurant, while he drove her home, he
would be able to ask for an explanation, to make her promise, either that
she would not go to Chatou next day, or that she would procure an
invitation for him also, and to lull to rest in her arms the anguish that
still tormented him. At last the carriages were ordered.
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