three o'clock
But she was wrong ; it was what gave her away ; she had not taken into account that this fragmentary detail of the truth had sharp edges which could not : be made to fit in , except to those contiguous fragments of the truth from which she had arbitrarily detached it , edges which , whatever the fictitious details in which she might embed it , would continue to shew , by their overlapping angles and by the gaps which she had forgotten to fill , that its proper place was elsewhere . `` She admits that she heard me ring , and then knock , that she knew it was myself , that she wanted to see me , '' Swann thought to himself . `` But that does n't correspond with the fact that she did not let me in . '' He did not , however , draw her attention to this inconsistency , for he thought that , if left to herself , Odette might perhaps produce some falsehood which would give him a faint indication of the truth ; she spoke ; he did not interrupt her , he gathered up , with an eager and sorrowful piety , the words that fell from her lips , feeling -LRB- and rightly feeling , since she was hiding the truth behind them as she spoke -RRB- that , like the veil of a sanctuary , they kept a vague imprint , traced a faint outline of that infinitely precious and , alas , undiscoverable truth ; -- what she had been doing , that afternoon , at three o'clock , when he had called , -- a truth of which he would never possess any more than these falsifications , illegible and divine traces , a truth which would exist henceforward only in the secretive memory of this creature , who would contemplate it in utter ignorance of its value , but would never yield it up to him . It was true that he had , now and then , a strong suspicion that Odette 's daily activities were not in themselves passionately interesting , and that such relations as she might have with other men did not exhale , naturally , in a universal sense , or for every rational being , a spirit of morbid gloom capable of infecting with fever or of inciting to suicide . He realised , at such moments , that that interest , that gloom , existed in him only as a malady might exist , and that , once he was cured of the malady , the actions of Odette , the kisses that she might have bestowed , would become once again as innocuous as those of countless other women . But the consciousness that the painful curiosity with which Swann now studied them had its origin only in himself was not enough to make him decide that it was unreasonable to regard that curiosity as important , and to take every possible step to satisfy it .