ine and frosty nights of early spring, and saw the
dazzling moonbeams fall between his eyes and the deserted streets, he
would think of that other face, gleaming and faintly roseate like the
moon's, which had, one day, risen on the horizon of his mind and since
then had shed upon the world that mysterious light in which he saw it
bathed. If he arrived after the hour at which Odette sent her servants
to bed, before ringing the bell at the gate of her little garden,
he would go round first into the other street, over which, at the
ground-level, among the windows (all exactly alike, but darkened) of
the adjoining houses, shone the solitary lighted window of her room.
He would rap upon the pane, and she would hear the signal, and answer,
before running to meet him at the gate. He would find, lying open on the
piano, some of her favourite music, the _Valse des Roses_, the _Pauvre
Fou_ of Tagliafico (which, according to the instructions embodied in her
will, was to be played at her funeral); but he would ask her, instead,
to give him the little phrase from Vinteuil's sonata. It was true that
Odette played vilely, but often the fairest impression that remains in
our minds of a favourite air is one which has arisen out of a jumble
of wrong notes struck by unskilful fingers upon a tuneless piano. The
little phrase was associated still, in Swann's mind, with his love for
Odette. He felt clearly that this love was something to which there were
no corresponding external signs, whose meaning could not be proved by
any but himself; he realised, too, that Odette's qualities were not such
as to justify his setting so high a value on the hours he spent in
her company. And often, when the cold government of reason stood
unchallenged, he would readily have ceased to sacrifice so many of his
intellectual and social interests to this imaginary pleasure. But the
little phrase, as soon as it struck his ear, had the power to liberate
in him the room that was needed to contain it; the proportions of
Swann's soul were altered; a margin was left for a form of enjoyment
which corresponded no more than his love for Odette to any external
object, and yet was not, like his enjoyment of that love, purely
individual, but assumed for him an objective reality superior to that
of other concrete things. This thirst for an untasted charm, the little
phrase would stimulate it anew in him, but without bringing him any
definite gratification to assuage it. With