Page 475 - swanns-way

ceased to exert its inhibitive control; or, without that even,
the thought of some information for which he had forgot-
ten to ask Odette, such as if she had decided in what colour
she would have her carriage repainted, or, with regard to
some investment, whether they were ‘ordinary’ or ‘prefer-
ence’ shares that she wished him to buy (for it was all very
well to shew her that he could live without seeing her, but if,
after that, the carriage had to be painted over again, if the
shares produced no dividend, a fine lot of good he would
have done),—and suddenly, like a stretched piece of elastic
which is let go, or the air in a pneumatic machine which is
ripped open, the idea of seeing her again, from the remote
point in time to which it had been attached, sprang back
into the field of the present and of immediate possibilities.
It sprang back thus without meeting any further resis-
tance, so irresistible, in fact, that Swann had been far less
unhappy in watching the end gradually approaching, day
by day, of the fortnight which he must spend apart from
Odette, than he was when kept waiting ten minutes while
his coachman brought round the carriage which was to take
him to her, minutes which he passed in transports of im-
patience and joy, in which he recaptured a thousand times
over, to lavish on it all the wealth of his affection, that idea
of his meeting with Odette, which, by so abrupt a repercus-
sion, at a moment when he supposed it so remote, was once
more present and on the very surface of his consciousness.
The fact was that this idea no longer found, as an obstacle
in its course, the desire to contrive without further delay
to resist its coming, which had ceased to have any place in

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