Page 353 - swanns-way

(but that was at least an hour ago) that she would prob-
ably stop to drink a cup of chocolate at Prévost’s on her
way home. Swann set off at once for Prévost’s, but every
few yards his carriage was held up by others, or by people
crossing the street, loathsome obstacles each of which he
would gladly have crushed beneath his wheels, were it not
that a policeman fumbling with a note-book would delay
him even longer than the actual passage of the pedestrian.
He counted the minutes feverishly, adding a few seconds to
each so as to be quite certain that he had not given him-
self short measure, and so, possibly, exaggerated whatever
chance there might actually be of his arriving at Prévost’s
in time, and of finding her still there. And then, in a mo-
ment of illumination, like a man in a fever who awakes from
sleep and is conscious of the absurdity of the dream-shapes
among which his mind has been wandering without any
clear distinction between himself and them, Swann sud-
denly perceived how foreign to his nature were the thoughts
which he had been revolving in his mind ever since he had
heard at the Verdurins’ that Odette had left, how novel the
heartache from which he was suffering, but of which he was
only now conscious, as though he had just woken up. What!
all this disturbance simply because he would not see Odette,
now, till to-morrow, exactly what he had been hoping, not
an hour before, as he drove toward Mme. Verdurin’s. He
was obliged to admit also that now, as he sat in the same
carriage and drove to Prévost’s, he was no longer the same
man, was no longer alone even—but that a new personality
was there beside him, adhering to him, amalgamated with

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