Page 458 - swanns-way

knowing what to do with herself she had spent the evening
alone at a theatre, had long since gone home to bed, and was
peacefully asleep.
As a matter of fact, she had never given him a thought.
And such moments as these, in which she forgot Swann’s
very existence, were of more value to Odette, did more to
attach him to her, than all her infidelities. For in this way
Swann was kept in that state of painful agitation which had
once before been effective in making his interest blossom
into love, on the night when he had failed to find Odette
at the Verdurins’ and had hunted for her all evening. And
he did not have (as I had, afterwards, at Combray in my
childhood) happy days in which to forget the sufferings that
would return with the night. For his days, Swann must pass
them without Odette; and as he told himself, now and then,
to allow so pretty a woman to go out by herself in Paris was
just as rash as to leave a case filled with jewels in the mid-
dle of the street. In this mood he would scowl furiously at
the passers-by, as though they were so many pickpockets.
But their faces—a collective and formless mass—escaped
the grasp of his imagination, and so failed to feed the flame
of his jealousy. The effort exhausted Swann’s brain, until,
passing his hand over his eyes, he cried out: ‘Heaven help
me!’ as people, after lashing themselves into an intellectual
frenzy in their endeavours to master the problem of the re-
ality of the external world, or that of the immortality of the
soul, afford relief to their weary brains by an unreasoning
act of faith. But the thought of his absent mistress was in-
cessantly, indissolubly blended with all the simplest actions

458 Swann’s Way