Page 476 - swanns-way

Swann’s mind since, having proved to himself—or so, at
least, he believed—that he was so easily capable of resisting
it, he no longer saw any inconvenience in postponing a plan
of separation which he was now certain of being able to put
into operation whenever he would. Furthermore, this idea
of seeing her again came back to him adorned with a novel-
ty, a seductiveness, armed with a virulence, all of which long
habit had enfeebled, but which had acquired new vigour
during this privation, not of three days but of a fortnight
(for a period of abstinence may be calculated, by anticipa-
tion, as having lasted already until the final date assigned to
it), and had converted what had been, until then, a pleasure
in store, which could easily be sacrificed, into an unlooked-
for happiness which he was powerless to resist. Finally, the
idea returned to him with its beauty enhanced by his own
ignorance of what Odette might have thought, might, per-
haps, have done on finding that he shewed no sign of life,
with the result that he was going now to meet with the en-
trancing revelation of an Odette almost unknown.
But she, just as she had supposed that his refusal to send
her money was only a feint, saw nothing but a pretext in the
question which he came, now, to ask her, about the repaint-
ing of her carriage, or the purchase of stock. For she could
not reconstruct the several phases of these crises through
which he passed, and in the general idea which she formed
of them she made no attempt to understand their mecha-
nism, looking only to what she knew beforehand, their
necessary, never-failing and always identical termination.
An imperfect idea (though possibly all the more profound

476 Swann’s Way