le difficulties with one or another of her friends. And so, when
she lied, smitten with fear, feeling herself to be but feebly armed for
her defence, unconfident of success, she was inclined to weep from sheer
exhaustion, as children weep sometimes when they have not slept. She
knew, also, that her lie, as a rule, was doing a serious injury to the
man to whom she was telling it, and that she might find herself at
his mercy if she told it badly. Therefore she felt at once humble and
culpable in his presence. And when she had to tell an insignificant,
social lie its hazardous associations, and the memories which it
recalled, would leave her weak with a sense of exhaustion and penitent
with a consciousness of wrongdoing.

What depressing lie was she now concocting for Swann's benefit, to give
her that pained expression, that plaintive voice, which seemed to falter
beneath the effort that she was forcing herself to make, and to plead
for pardon? He had an idea that it was not merely the truth about what
had occurred that afternoon that she was endeavouring to hide from him,
but something more immediate, something, possibly, which had not yet
happened, but might happen now at any time, and, when it did, would
throw a light upon that earlier event. At that moment, he heard the
front-door bell ring. Odette never stopped speaking, but her words
dwindled into an inarticulate moan. Her regret at not having seen Swann
that afternoon, at not having opened the door to him, had melted into a
universal despair.

He could hear the gate being closed, and the sound of a carriage, as
though some one were going away--probably the person whom Swann must on
no account meet--after being told that Odette was not at home. And then,
when he reflected that, merely by coming at an hour when he was not in
the habit of coming, he had managed to disturb so many arrangements of
which she did not wish him to know, he had a feeling of discouragement
that amounted, almost, to distress. But since he was in love with
Odette, since he was in the habit of turning all his thoughts towards
her, the pity with which he might have been inspired for himself he felt
for her only, and murmured: "Poor darling!" When finally he left her,
she took up several letters which were lying on the table, and asked him
if he would be so good as to post them for her. He walked along to the
post-office, took the letters from his pocket, and, before dropping each
of them into the