now he has died for her, without getting
his reward. Will he get it now, I wonder, and in what form? It can only
come to him from her."

At the far end of Mlle. Vinteuil's sitting-room, on the mantelpiece,
stood a small photograph of her father which she went briskly to fetch,
just as the sound of carriage wheels was heard from the road outside,
then flung herself down on a sofa and drew close beside her a little
table on which she placed the photograph, just as, long ago, M. Vinteuil
had 'placed' beside him the piece of music which he would have liked
to play over to my parents. And then her friend came in. Mlle. Vinteuil
greeted her without rising, clasping her hands behind her head, and
drew her body to one side of the sofa, as though to 'make room.' But no
sooner had she done this than she appeared to feel that she was perhaps
suggesting a particular position to her friend, with an emphasis which
might well be regarded as importunate. She thought that her friend would
prefer, no doubt, to sit down at some distance from her, upon a chair;
she felt that she had been indiscreet; her sensitive heart took fright;
stretching herself out again over the whole of the sofa, she closed her
eyes and began to yawn, so as to indicate that it was a desire to sleep,
and that alone, which had made her lie down there. Despite the rude
and hectoring familiarity with which she treated her companion I could
recognise in her the obsequious and reticent advances, the abrupt
scruples and restraints which had characterised her father. Presently
she rose and came to the window, where she pretended to be trying to
close the shutters and not succeeding.

"Leave them open," said her friend. "I am hot."

"But it's too dreadful! People will see us," Mlle. Vinteuil answered.
And then she guessed, probably, that her friend would think that she had
uttered these words simply in order to provoke a reply in certain other
words, which she seemed, indeed, to wish to hear spoken, but, from
prudence, would let her friend be the first to speak. And so, although
I could not see her face clearly enough, I am sure that the expression
must have appeared on it which my grandmother had once found so
delightful, when she hastily went on: "When I say 'see us' I mean, of
course, see us reading. It's so dreadful to think that in every trivial
little thing you do some one may be overlooking you."

With the instinctive generosity of her nature, a courtesy beyond he