midday
When he had sat for a long time gazing at the Botticelli , he would think of his own living Botticelli , who seemed all the lovelier in contrast , and as he drew towards him the photograph of Zipporah he would imagine that he was holding Odette against his heart . It was not only Odette 's indifference , however , that he must take pains to circumvent ; it was also , not infrequently , his own ; feeling that , since Odette had had every facility for seeing him , she seemed no longer to have very much to say to him when they did meet , he was afraid lest the manner -- at once trivial , monotonous , and seemingly unalterable -- which she now adopted when they were together should ultimately destroy in him that romantic hope , that a day might come when she would make avowal of her passion , by which hope alone he had become and would remain her lover . And so to alter , to give a fresh moral aspect to that Odette , of whose unchanging mood he was afraid of growing weary , he wrote , suddenly , a letter full of hinted discoveries and feigned indignation , which he sent off so that it should reach her before dinner-time . He knew that she would be frightened , and that she would reply , and he hoped that , when the fear of losing him clutched at her heart , it would force from her words such as he had never yet heard her utter : and he was right -- by repeating this device he had won from her the most affectionate letters that she had , so far , written him , one of them -LRB- which she had sent to him at midday by a special messenger from the Maison Dorée -- it was the day of the Paris-Murcie Fête given for the victims of the recent floods in Murcia -RRB- beginning `` My dear , my hand trembles so that I can scarcely write -- '' ; and these letters he had kept in the same drawer as the withered chrysanthemum . Or else , if she had not had time to write , when he arrived at the Verdurins ' she would come running up to him with an `` I 've something to say to you ! '' and he would gaze curiously at the revelation in her face and speech of what she had hitherto kept concealed from him of her heart . Even as he drew near to the Verdurins ' door , and caught sight of the great lamp-lit spaces of the drawing-room windows , whose shutters were never closed , he would begin to melt at the thought of the charming creature whom he would see , as he entered the room , basking in that golden light .