his way to surprise and seize it; or
rather he would tap upon the shutters, as he had often done when he had
come there very late, and by that signal Odette would at least learn
that he knew, that he had seen the light and had heard the voices; while
he himself, who a moment ago had been picturing her as laughing at him,
as sharing with that other the knowledge of how effectively he had been
tricked, now it was he that saw them, confident and persistent in
their error, tricked and trapped by none other than himself, whom they
believed to be a mile away, but who was there, in person, there with a
plan, there with the knowledge that he was going, in another minute, to
tap upon the shutter. And, perhaps, what he felt (almost an agreeable
feeling) at that moment was something more than relief at the solution
of a doubt, at the soothing of a pain; was an intellectual pleasure.
If, since he had fallen in love, things had recovered a little of the
delicate attraction that they had had for him long ago--though only when
a light was shed upon them by a thought, a memory of Odette--now it was
another of the faculties, prominent in the studious days of his youth,
that Odette had quickened with new life, the passion for truth, but for
a truth which, too, was interposed between himself and his mistress,
receiving its light from her alone, a private and personal truth the
sole object of which (an infinitely precious object, and one almost
impersonal in its absolute beauty) was Odette--Odette in her activities,
her environment, her projects, and her past. At every other period in
his life, the little everyday words and actions of another person had
always seemed wholly valueless to Swann; if gossip about such things
were repeated to him, he would dismiss it as insignificant, and while he
listened it was only the lowest, the most commonplace part of his
mind that was interested; at such moments he felt utterly dull and
uninspired. But in this strange phase of love the personality of another
person becomes so enlarged, so deepened, that the curiosity which
he could now feel aroused in himself, to know the least details of a
woman's daily occupation, was the same thirst for knowledge with which
he had once studied history. And all manner of actions, from which,
until now, he would have recoiled in shame, such as spying, to-night,
outside a window, to-morrow, for all he knew, putting adroitly
provocative questions to casual witnesses, brib