Page 303 - swanns-way

it may well become the cause of love if it presents itself first.
In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of
the woman whom he loves; later, the feeling that he possess-
es the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall
in love with her. And 50, at an age when it would appear—
since one seeks in love before everything else a subjective
pleasure—that the taste for feminine beauty must play the
larger part in its procreation, love may come into being, love
of the most physical order, without any foundation in de-
sire. At this time of life a man has already been wounded
more than once by the darts of love; it no longer evolves by
itself, obeying its own incomprehensible and fatal laws, be-
fore his passive and astonished heart. We come to its aid; we
falsify it by memory and by suggestion; recognising one of
its symptoms we recall and recreate the rest. Since we pos-
sess its hymn, engraved on our hearts in its entirety, there
is no need of any woman to repeat the opening lines, potent
with the admiration which her beauty inspires, for us to re-
member all that follows. And if she begin in the middle,
where it sings of our existing, henceforward, for one anoth-
er only, we are well enough attuned to that music to be able
to take it up and follow our partner, without hesitation, at
the first pause in her voice.
Odette de Crécy came again to see Swann; her visits
grew more frequent, and doubtless each visit revived the
sense of disappointment which he felt at the sight of a face
whose details he had somewhat forgotten in the interval,
not remembering it as either so expressive or, in spite of her
youth, so faded; he used to regret, while she was talking to

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