was all very well to shew her that he could live without
seeing her, but if, after that, the carriage had to be painted over
again, if the shares produced no dividend, a fine lot of good he would
have done),--and suddenly, like a stretched piece of elastic which is
let go, or the air in a pneumatic machine which is ripped open, the idea
of seeing her again, from the remote point in time to which it had been
attached, sprang back into the field of the present and of immediate
possibilities.

It sprang back thus without meeting any further resistance, so
irresistible, in fact, that Swann had been far less unhappy in watching
the end gradually approaching, day by day, of the fortnight which he
must spend apart from Odette, than he was when kept waiting ten minutes
while his coachman brought round the carriage which was to take him to
her, minutes which he passed in transports of impatience and joy, in
which he recaptured a thousand times over, to lavish on it all the
wealth of his affection, that idea of his meeting with Odette, which, by
so abrupt a repercussion, at a moment when he supposed it so remote, was
once more present and on the very surface of his consciousness. The fact
was that this idea no longer found, as an obstacle in its course, the
desire to contrive without further delay to resist its coming, which
had ceased to have any place in Swann's mind since, having proved to
himself--or so, at least, he believed--that he was so easily capable of
resisting it, he no longer saw any inconvenience in postponing a plan of
separation which he was now certain of being able to put into operation
whenever he would. Furthermore, this idea of seeing her again came back
to him adorned with a novelty, a seductiveness, armed with a virulence,
all of which long habit had enfeebled, but which had acquired new vigour
during this privation, not of three days but of a fortnight (for a
period of abstinence may be calculated, by anticipation, as having
lasted already until the final date assigned to it), and had converted
what had been, until then, a pleasure in store, which could easily be
sacrificed, into an unlooked-for happiness which he was powerless to
resist. Finally, the idea returned to him with its beauty enhanced by
his own ignorance of what Odette might have thought, might, perhaps,
have done on finding that he shewed no sign of life, with the result
that he was going now to meet with the entrancing revelation of an
Ode