" Odette narrated this
episode almost as if it were a joke, either because it appeared to her to
be quite natural, or because she thought that she was thereby minimising
its importance, or else so as not to appear ashamed. But, catching sight
of Swann's face, she changed her tone, and:
"You are a fiend!" she flung at him, "you enjoy tormenting me, making me
tell you lies, just so that you'll leave me in peace."
This second blow struck at Swann was even more excruciating than the
first. Never had he supposed it to have been so recent an affair, hidden
from his eyes that had been too innocent to discern it, not in a past
which he had never known, but in evenings which he so well remembered,
which he had lived through with Odette, of which he had supposed himself
to have such an intimate, such an exhaustive knowledge, and which now
assumed, retrospectively, an aspect of cunning and deceit and cruelty. In
the midst of them parted, suddenly, a gaping chasm, that moment on the
Island in the Bois de Boulogne. Without being intelligent, Odette had the
charm of being natural. She had recounted, she had acted the little scene
with so much simplicity that Swann, as he gasped for breath, could vividly
see it: Odette yawning, the "rock there,".
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