returned to the place from which Swann's jealousy had for the moment
driven her, in the angle in which he found her charming, he pictured her
to himself as full of tenderness, with a look of consent in her eyes,
and so beautiful that he could not refrain from moving his lips towards
her, as though she had actually been in the room for him to kiss; and
he preserved a sense of gratitude to her for that bewitching, kindly
glance, as strong as though she had really looked thus at him, and it
had not been merely his imagination that had portrayed it in order to
satisfy his desire.

What distress he must have caused her! Certainly he found adequate
reasons for his resentment, but they would not have been sufficient to
make him feel that resentment, if he had not so passionately loved her.
Had he not nourished grievances, just as serious, against other women,
to whom he would, none the less, render willing service to-day, feeling
no anger towards them because he no longer loved them? If the day ever
came when he would find himself in the same state of indifference with
regard to Odette, he would then understand that it was his jealousy
alone which had led him to find something atrocious, unpardonable, in
this desire (after all, so natural a desire, springing from a childlike
ingenuousness and also from a certain delicacy in her nature) to be
able, in her turn, when an occasion offered, to repay the Verdurins for
their hospitality, and to play the hostess in a house of her own.

He returned to the other point of view--opposite to that of his love
and of his jealousy, to which he resorted at times by a sort of mental
equity, and in order to make allowance for different eventualities--from
which he tried to form a fresh judgment of Odette, based on the
supposition that he had never been in love with her, that she was to him
just a woman like other women, that her life had not been (whenever he
himself was not present) different, a texture woven in secret apart from
him, and warped against him.

Wherefore believe that she would enjoy down there with Forcheville or
with other men intoxicating pleasures which she had never known with
him, and which his jealousy alone had fabricated in all their elements?
At Bayreuth, as in Paris, if it should happen that Forcheville thought
of him at all, it would only be as of some one who counted for a great
deal in the life of Odette, some one for whom he was obliged to make
way, when they met