She spoke to him once of a visit that Forcheville had paid her on the day of the Paris-Murcie Fête. “What! you knew him as long ago as that? Oh, yes, of course you did,” he corrected himself, so as not to show that he had been ignorant of the fact. And suddenly he began to tremble at the thought that, on the day of the Paris-Murcie Fête, when he had received that letter which he had so carefully preserved, she had been having luncheon, perhaps, with Forcheville at the Maison d’Or. She swore that she had not. “Still, the Maison d’Or reminds me of something or other which, I knew at the time, wasn’t true,” he pursued, hoping to frighten her. “Yes, that I hadn’t been there at all that evening when I told you I had just come from there, and you had been looking for me at Prévost’s,” she replied (judging by his manner that he knew) with a firmness that was based not so much upon cynicism as upon timidity, a fear of crossing Swann, which her own self-respect made her anxious to conceal, and a desire to show him that she could be perfectly frank if she chose.