sought an excuse in his fear of forming new friendships, which he
gallantly described as his fear of a hopeless passion. "You are afraid
of falling in love? How funny that is, when I go about seeking nothing
else, and would give my soul just to find a little love somewhere!" she
had said, so naturally and with such an air of conviction that he had
been genuinely touched. "Some woman must have made you suffer. And you
think that the rest are all like her. She can't have understood you: you
are so utterly different from ordinary men. That's what I liked about
you when I first saw you; I felt at once that you weren't like everybody
else."

"And then, besides, there's yourself----" he had continued, "I know what
women are; you must have a whole heap of things to do, and never any
time to spare."

"I? Why, I have never anything to do. I am always free, and I always
will be free if you want me. At whatever hour of the day or night it may
suit you to see me, just send for me, and I shall be only too delighted
to come. Will you do that? Do you know what I should really like--to
introduce you to Mme. Verdurin, where I go every evening. Just fancy my
finding you there, and thinking that it was a little for my sake that
you had gone."

No doubt, in thus remembering their conversations, in thinking about her
thus when he was alone, he did no more than call her image into being
among those of countless other women in his romantic dreams; but if,
thanks to some accidental circumstance (or even perhaps without that
assistance, for the circumstance which presents itself at the moment
when a mental state, hitherto latent, makes itself felt, may well have
had no influence whatsoever upon that state), the image of Odette de
Crecy came to absorb the whole of his dreams, if from those dreams
the memory of her could no longer be eliminated, then her bodily
imperfections would no longer be of the least importance, nor would the
conformity of her body, more or less than any other, to the requirements
of Swann's taste; since, having become the body of her whom he loved, it
must henceforth be the only one capable of causing him joy or anguish.

It so happened that my grandfather had known--which was more than could
be said of any other actual acquaintance--the family of these Verdurins.
But he had entirely severed his connection with what he called "young
Verdurin," taking a general view of him as one who had fallen--though
without losing ho