“Did you notice the face he pulled when he saw that she wasn’t here?” M. Verdurin asked his wife. “I think we may say that he’s hooked.”

“The face he pulled?” exploded Dr. Cottard who, having left the house for a moment to visit a patient, had just returned to fetch his wife and did not know whom they were discussing.

“D’you mean to say you didn’t meet him on the doorstep⁠—the loveliest of Swanns?”

“No. M. Swann has been here?”

“Just for a moment. We had a glimpse of a Swann tremendously agitated. In a state of nerves. You see, Odette had left.”