Page 358 - swanns-way

as though, by inspiring in him a will to triumph which
would reinforce his own, he could bring it to pass, by a mir-
acle, that Odette—assuming that she had long since gone
home to bed,—might yet be found seated in some restau-
rant on the boulevards. He pursued the quest as far as the
Maison Dorée, burst twice into Tortoni’s and, still without
catching sight of her, was emerging from the Café Anglais,
striding with haggard gaze towards his carriage, which was
waiting for him at the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens,
when he collided with a person coming in the opposite di-
rection; it was Odette; she explained, later, that there had
been no room at Prévost’s, that she had gone, instead, to sup
at the Maison Dorée, and had been sitting there in an alcove
where he must have overlooked her, and that she was now
looking for her carriage.
She had so little expected to see him that she started back
in alarm. As for him, he had ransacked the streets of Paris,
not that he supposed it possible that he should find her, but
because he would have suffered even more cruelly by aban-
doning the attempt. But now the joy (which, his reason had
never ceased to assure him, was not, that evening at least, to
be realised) was suddenly apparent, and more real than ever
before; for he himself had contributed nothing to it by an-
ticipating probabilities,—it remained integral and external
to himself; there was no need for him to draw on his own re-
sources to endow it with truth—‘twas from itself that there
emanated, ‘twas itself that projected towards him that truth
whose glorious rays melted and scattered like the cloud of a
dream the sense of loneliness which had lowered over him,

358 Swann’s Way