one of his first visits. But to Swann she had
added: "Why did you not forget your heart also? I should never have let
you have that back." To Forcheville nothing of that sort; no allusion
that could suggest any intrigue between them. And, really, he was
obliged to admit that in all this business Forcheville had been worse
treated than himself, since Odette was writing to him to make him
believe that her visitor had been an uncle. From which it followed that
he, Swann, was the man to whom she attached importance, and for whose
sake she had sent the other away. And yet, if there had been nothing
between Odette and Forcheville, why not have opened the door at once,
why have said, "I was right to open the door; it was my uncle." Right?
if she was doing nothing wrong at that moment how could Forcheville
possibly have accounted for her not opening the door? For a time Swann
stood still there, heartbroken, bewildered, and yet happy; gazing at
this envelope which Odette had handed to him without a scruple, so
absolute was her trust in his honour; through its transparent window
there had been disclosed to him, with the secret history of an incident
which he had despaired of ever being able to learn, a fragment of the
life of Odette, seen as through a narrow, luminous incision, cut into
its surface without her knowledge. Then his jealousy rejoiced at the
discovery, as though that jealousy had had an independent existence,
fiercely egotistical, gluttonous of every thing that would feed its
vitality, even at the expense of Swann himself. Now it had food in
store, and Swann could begin to grow uneasy afresh every evening, over
the visits that Odette had received about five o'clock, and could
seek to discover where Forcheville had been at that hour. For Swann's
affection for Odette still preserved the form which had been imposed on
it, from the beginning, by his ignorance of the occupations in which she
passed her days, as well as by the mental lethargy which prevented him
from supplementing that ignorance by imagination. He was not jealous, at
first, of the whole of Odette's life, but of those moments only in which
an incident, which he had perhaps misinterpreted, had led him to suppose
that Odette might have played him false. His jealousy, like an octopus
which throws out a first, then a second, and finally a third tentacle,
fastened itself irremovably first to that moment, five o'clock in
the afternoon, then to another, then to ano