Page 631 - swanns-way

to put on the appearance of being able to be happy without
seeing me; the reason for which she has assumed the form
of the other Gilberte, who is simply a companion.’
Every evening I would beguile myself into imagining
this letter, believing that I was actually reading it, recit-
ing each of its sentences in turn. Suddenly I would stop, in
alarm. I had realised that, if I was to receive a letter from
Gilberte, it could not, in any case, be this letter, since it was
I myself who had just composed it. And from that moment
I would strive to keep my thoughts clear of the words which
I should have liked her to write to me, from fear lest, by first
selecting them myself, I should be excluding just those iden-
tical words,—the dearest, the most desired—from the field
of possible events. Even if, by an almost impossible coinci-
dence, it had been precisely the letter of my invention that
Gilberte had addressed to me of her own accord, recognis-
ing my own work in it I should not have had the impression
that I was receiving something that had not originated in
myself, something real, something new, a happiness exter-
nal to my mind, independent of my will, a gift indeed from
love.
While I waited I read over again a page which, although
it had not been written to me by Gilberte, came to me, none
the less, from her, that page by Bergotte upon the beauty
of the old myths from which Racine drew his inspiration,
which (with the agate marble) I always kept within reach.
I was touched by my friend’s kindness in having procured
the book for me; and as everyone is obliged to find some
reason for his passion, so much so that he is glad to find in

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