I now recognised in the hard look which had made me turn round that morning outside the Casino the same that I had seen fixed on me at Tansonville, at the moment when Mme. Swann called Gilberte away.

“But, I say, all those mistresses that, you told me, your uncle M. de Charlus had had, wasn’t Mme. Swann one of them?”

“Good lord, no! That is to say, my uncle’s a great friend of Swann, and has always stood up for him. But no one has ever suggested that he was his wife’s lover. You would make a great sensation in Paris society if people thought you believed that.”

I dared not reply that it would have caused an even greater sensation in Combray society if people had thought that I did not believe it.