Page 568 - swanns-way

far more than I could ever have suspected.’ But he could not
confine himself to these detached observations. He sought
to form an exact estimate of the importance of what she
had just told him, so as to know whether he might conclude
that she had done these things often, and was likely to do
them again. He repeated her words to himself: ‘I knew quite
well what she was after.’ ‘Two or three times.’ ‘I’ve heard
that tale before.’ But they did not reappear in his memory
unarmed; each of them held a knife with which it stabbed
him afresh. For a long time, like a sick man who cannot re-
strain himself from attempting, every minute, to make the
movement that, he knows, will hurt him, he kept on mur-
muring to himself: ‘I’m quite happy where I am, thank you,’
‘I’ve heard that tale before,’ but the pain was so intense that
he was obliged to stop. He was amazed to find that actions
which he had always, hitherto, judged so lightly, had dis-
missed, indeed, with a laugh, should have become as serious
to him as a disease which might easily prove fatal. He knew
any number of women whom he could ask to keep an eye
on Odette, but how was he to expect them to adjust them-
selves to his new point of view, and not to remain at that
which for so long had been his own, which had always guid-
ed him in his voluptuous existence; not to say to him with
a smile: ‘You jealous monster, wanting to rob other people
of their pleasure!’ By what trap-door, suddenly lowered, had
he (who had never found, in the old days, in his love for
Odette, any but the most refined of pleasures) been precipi-
tated into this new circle of hell from which he could not
see how he was ever to escape. Poor Odette! He wished her

568 Swann’s Way