Page 557 - swanns-way

allow, in spite of himself, to pass his lips, out of the number-
less other fragments of that complete reconstruction of her
daily life which he carried secretly in his mind, he led her to
suppose that he was perfectly informed upon matters,
which, in reality, he neither knew nor suspected, for if he
often adjured Odette never to swerve from or make altera-
tion of the truth, that was only, whether he realised it or no,
in order that Odette should tell him everything that she did.
No doubt, as he used to assure Odette, he loved sincerity,
but only as he might love a pander who could keep him in
touch with the daily life of his mistress. Moreover, his love
of sincerity, not being disinterested, had not improved his
character. The truth which he cherished was that which
Odette would tell him; but he himself, in order to extract
that truth from her, was not afraid to have recourse to false-
hood, that very falsehood which he never ceased to depict to
Odette as leading every human creature down to utter deg-
radation. In a word, he lied as much as did Odette, because,
while more unhappy than she, he was no less egotistical.
And she, when she heard him repeating thus to her the
things that she had done, would stare at him with a look of
distrust and, at all hazards, of indignation, so as not to ap-
pear to be humiliated, and to be blushing for her actions.
One day, after the longest period of calm through which he
had yet been able to exist without being overtaken by an at-
tack of jealousy, he had accepted an invitation to spend the
evening at the theatre with the Princesse des Laumes. Hav-
ing opened his newspaper to find out what was being played,
the sight of the title—Les Filles de Marbre, by Théodore

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