Page 570 - swanns-way

But, as soon as the power that any one of Odette’s sentences
had to make Swann suffer seemed to be nearly exausted, lo
and behold another, one of those to which he had hitherto
paid least attention, almost a new sentence, came to relieve
the first, and to strike at him with undiminished force. The
memory of the evening on which he had dined with the
Princesse des Laumes was painful to him, but it was no more
than the centre, the core of his pain. That radiated vaguely
round about it, overflowing into all the preceding and fol-
lowing days. And on whatever point in it he might intend
his memory to rest, it was the whole of that season, during
which the Verdurins had so often gone to dine upon the Is-
land in the Bois, that sprang back to hurt him. So violently,
that by slow degrees the curiosity which his jealousy was
ever exciting in him was neutralised by his fear of the fresh
tortures which he would be inflicting upon himself were he
to satisfy it. He recognised that all the period of Odette’s
life which had elapsed before she first met him, a period of
which he had never sought to form any picture in his mind,
was not the featureless abstraction which he could vague-
ly see, but had consisted of so many definite, dated years,
each crowded with concrete incidents. But were he to learn
more of them, he feared lest her past, now colourless, fluid
and supportable, might assume a tangible, an obscene form,
with individual and diabolical features. And he continued
to refrain from seeking a conception of it, not any longer
now from laziness of mind, but from fear of suffering. He
hoped that, some day, he might be able to hear the Island
in the Bois, or the Princesse des Laumes mentioned with-

570 Swann’s Way