Page 425 - swanns-way

son becomes so enlarged, so deepened, that the curiosity
which he could now feel aroused in himself, to know the
least details of a woman’s daily occupation, was the same
thirst for knowledge with which he had once studied his-
tory. And all manner of actions, from which, until now, he
would have recoiled in shame, such as spying, to-night, out-
side a window, to-morrow, for all he knew, putting adroitly
provocative questions to casual witnesses, bribing servants,
listening at doors, seemed to him, now, to be precisely on a
level with the deciphering of manuscripts, the weighing of
evidence, the interpretation of old monuments, that was to
say, so many different methods of scientific investigation,
each one having a definite intellectual value and being le-
gitimately employable in the search for truth.
As his hand stole out towards the shutters he felt a pang
of shame at the thought that Odette would now know that
he had suspected her, that he had returned, that he had
posted himself outside her window. She had often told him
what a horror she had of jealous men, of lovers who spied.
What he was going to do would be extremely awkward, and
she would detest him for ever after, whereas now, for the
moment, for so long as he refrained from knocking, per-
haps even in the act of infidelity, she loved him still. How
often is not the prospect of future happiness thus sacrificed
to one’s impatient insistence upon an immediate gratifi-
cation. But his desire to know the truth was stronger, and
seemed to him nobler than his desire for her. He knew that
the true story of certain events, which he would have giv-
en his life to be able to reconstruct accurately and in full,

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