In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7]

by Marcel Proust

What, you don’t know how to shave; even on a night when you’ve been dining out, you have still a few hairs here,” he said, taking my chin between two fingers, so to speak magnetised, which after a moment’s resistance ran up to my ears, like the fingers of a barber.

Oh, it’s a flirtation, a planned seduction that has been thwarted.