Page 427 - swanns-way

otherwise all alike, he had been misled, this time, by the
light, and had knocked at the window beyond hers, in the
adjoining house. He made what apology he could and hur-
ried home, overjoyed that the satisfaction of his curiosity
had preserved their love intact, and that, having feigned for
so long, when in Odette’s company, a sort of indifference,
he had not now, by a demonstration of jealousy, given her
that proof of the excess of his own passion which, in a pair
of lovers, fully and finally dispenses the recipient from the
obligation to love the other enough. He never spoke to her
of this misadventure, he ceased even to think of it himself.
But now and then his thoughts in their wandering course
would come upon this memory where it lay unobserved,
would startle it into life, thrust it more deeply down into
his consciousness, and leave him aching with a sharp, far-
rooted pain. As though this had been a bodily pain, Swann’s
mind was powerless to alleviate it; in the case of bodily pain,
however, since it is independent of the mind, the mind can
dwell upon it, can note that it has diminished, that it has
momentarily ceased. But with this mental pain, the mind,
merely by recalling it, created it afresh. To determine not to
think of it was but to think of it still, to suffer from it still.
And when, in conversation with his friends, he forgot his
sufferings, suddenly a word casually uttered would make
him change countenance as a wounded man does when a
clumsy hand has touched his aching limb. When he came
away from Odette, he was happy, he felt calm, he recalled
the smile with which, in gentle mockery, she had spoken
to him of this man or of that, a smile which was all tender-

427