Page 461 - swanns-way

was to go to bed, some years later, on the evenings when
he came to dine with us at Combray—seemed illimitable to
him since he had not been able to see their end. And, once
or twice, he derived from such evenings that kind of happi-
ness which one would be inclined (did it not originate in so
violent a reaction from an anxiety abruptly terminated) to
call peaceful, since it consists in a pacifying of the mind: he
had looked in for a moment at a revel in the painter’s studio,
and was getting ready to go home; he was leaving behind
him Odette, transformed into a brilliant stranger, sur-
rounded by men to whom her glances and her gaiety, which
were not for him, seemed to hint at some voluptuous plea-
sure to be enjoyed there or elsewhere (possibly at the Bal des
Incohérents, to which he trembled to think that she might
be going on afterwards) which made Swann more jealous
than the thought of their actual physical union, since it was
more difficult to imagine; he was opening the door to go,
when he heard himself called back in these words (which,
by cutting off from the party that possible ending which
had so appalled him, made the party itself seem innocent
in retrospect, made Odette’s return home a thing no longer
inconceivable and terrible, but tender and familiar, a thing
that kept close to his side, like a part of his own daily life, in
his carriage; a thing that stripped Odette herself of the ex-
cess of brilliance and gaiety in her appearance, shewed that
it was only a disguise which she had assumed for a moment,
for his sake and not in view of any mysterious pleasures,
a disguise of which she had already wearied)—in these
words, which Odette flung out after him as he was crossing

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