Page 65 - swanns-way

kind of life, continuous and full of feeling.
My agony was soothed; I let myself be borne upon the
current of this gentle night on which I had my mother by
my side. I knew that such a night could not be repeated;
that the strongest desire I had in the world, namely, to keep
my mother in my room through the sad hours of darkness,
ran too much counter to general requirements and to the
wishes of others for such a concession as had been granted
me this evening to be anything but a rare and casual ex-
ception. To-morrow night I should again be the victim of
anguish and Mamma would not stay by my side. But when
these storms of anguish grew calm I could no longer rea-
lise their existence; besides, tomorrow evening was still a
long way off; I reminded myself that I should still have time
to think about things, albeit that remission of time could
bring me no access of power, albeit the coming event was in
no way dependent upon the exercise of my will, and seemed
not quite inevitable only because it was still separated from
me by this short interval.
*****
And so it was that, for a long time afterwards, when I
lay awake at night and revived old memories of Combray, I
saw no more of it than this sort of luminous panel, sharply
defined against a vague and shadowy background, like the
panels which a Bengal fire or some electric sign will illu-
minate and dissect from the front of a building the other
parts of which remain plunged in darkness: broad enough
at its base, the little parlour, the dining-room, the alluring
shadows of the path along which would come M. Swann,

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