seven o'clock
She poured out Swann 's tea , inquired `` Lemon or cream ? '' and , on his answering `` Cream , please , '' went on , smiling , `` A cloud ! '' And as he pronounced it excellent , `` You see , I know just how you like it . '' This tea had indeed seemed to Swann , just as it seemed to her , something precious , and love is so far obliged to find some justification for itself , some guarantee of its duration in pleasures which , on the contrary , would have no existence apart from love and must cease with its passing , that when he left her , at seven o'clock , to go and dress for the evening , all the way home , sitting bolt upright in his brougham , unable to repress the happiness with which the afternoon 's adventure had filled him , he kept on repeating to himself : `` What fun it would be to have a little woman like that in a place where one could always be certain of finding , what one never can be certain of finding , a really good cup of tea . '' An hour or so later he received a note from Odette , and at once recognised that florid handwriting , in which an affectation of British stiffness imposed an apparent discipline upon its shapeless characters , significant , perhaps , to less intimate eyes than his , of an untidiness of mind , a fragmentary education , a want of sincerity and decision . Swann had left his cigarette-case at her house . `` Why , '' she wrote , `` did you not forget your heart also ?