Page 473 - swanns-way

Sometimes several days had elapsed, during which she
had caused him no fresh anxiety; and as, from the next few
visits which he would pay her, he knew that he was likely
to derive not any great pleasure, but, more probably, some
annoyance which would put an end to the state of calm in
which he found himself, he wrote to her that he was very
busy, and would not be able to see her on any of the days
that he had suggested. Meanwhile, a letter from her, cross-
ing his, asked him to postpone one of those very meetings.
He asked himself, why; his suspicions, his grief, again took
hold of him. He could no longer abide, in the new state of
agitation into which he found himself plunged, by the ar-
rangements which he had made in his preceding state of
comparative calm; he would run to find her, and would in-
sist upon seeing her on each of the following days. And even
if she had not written first, if she merely acknowledged his
letter, it was enough to make him unable to rest without
seeing her. For, upsetting all Swann’s calculations, Odette’s
acceptance had entirely changed his attitude. Like every-
one who possesses something precious, so as to know what
would happen if he ceased for a moment to possess it, he
had detached the precious object from his mind, leaving, as
he thought, everything else in the same state as when it was
there. But the absence of one part from a whole is not only
that, it is not simply a partial omission, it is a disturbance
of all the other parts, a new state which it was impossible to
foresee from the old.
But at other times—when Odette was on the point of go-
ing away for a holiday—it was after some trifling quarrel

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