appiness.

In place of the abstract expressions "the time when I was happy," "the
time when I was loved," which he had often used until then, and without
much suffering, for his intelligence had not embodied in them anything
of the past save fictitious extracts which preserved none of the
reality, he now recovered everything that had fixed unalterably the
peculiar, volatile essence of that lost happiness; he could see it all;
the snowy, curled petals of the chrysanthemum which she had tossed
after him into his carriage, which he had kept pressed to his lips, the
address 'Maison Doree,' embossed on the note-paper on which he had read
"My hand trembles so as I write to you," the frowning contraction of her
eyebrows when she said pleadingly: "You won't let it be very long before
you send for me?"; he could smell the heated iron of the barber whom he
used to have in to singe his hair while Loredan went to fetch the little
working girl; could feel the torrents of rain which fell so often that
spring, the ice-cold homeward drive in his victoria, by moonlight; all
the network of mental habits, of seasonable impressions, of sensory
reactions, which had extended over a series of weeks its uniform meshes,
by which his body now found itself inextricably held. At that time he
had been satisfying a sensual curiosity to know what were the pleasures
of those people who lived for love alone. He had supposed that he could
stop there, that he would not be obliged to learn their sorrows also;
how small a thing the actual charm of Odette was now in comparison with
that formidable terror which extended it like a cloudy halo all around
her, that enormous anguish of not knowing at every hour of the day and
night what she had been doing, of not possessing her wholly, at all
times and in all places! Alas, he recalled the accents in which she had
exclaimed: "But I can see you at any time; I am always free!"--she, who
was never free now; the interest, the curiosity that she had shewn in
his life, her passionate desire that he should do her the favour--of
which it was he who, then, had felt suspicious, as of a possibly tedious
waste of his time and disturbance of his arrangements--of granting her
access to his study; how she had been obliged to beg that he would let
her take him to the Verdurins'; and, when he did allow her to come to
him once a month, how she had first, before he would let himself be
swayed, had to repeat what a joy it would be to