cene with so much simplicity that Swann, as he gasped for
breath, could vividly see it: Odette yawning, the "rock there,"... He
could hear her answer--alas, how lightheartedly--"I've heard that tale
before!" He felt that she would tell him nothing more that evening, that
no further revelation was to be expected for the present. He was silent
for a time, then said to her:

"My poor darling, you must forgive me; I know, I am hurting you
dreadfully, but it's all over now; I shall never think of it again."

But she saw that his eyes remained fixed upon the things that he did not
know, and on that past era of their love, monotonous and soothing in his
memory because it was vague, and now rent, as with a sword-wound, by the
news of that minute on the Island in the Bois, by moonlight, while he
was dining with the Princesse des Laumes. But he had so far acquired
the habit of finding life interesting--of marvelling at the strange
discoveries that there were to be made in it--that even while he was
suffering so acutely that he did not believe it possible to endure such
agony for any length of time, he was saying to himself: "Life is indeed
astonishing, and holds some fine surprises; it appears that vice is far
more common than one has been led to believe. Here is a woman in whom
I had absolute confidence, who looks so simple, so honest, who, in any
case, even allowing that her morals are not strict, seemed quite normal
and healthy in her tastes and inclinations. I receive a most improbable
accusation, I question her, and the little that she admits reveals far
more than I could ever have suspected." But he could not confine himself
to these detached observations. He sought to form an exact estimate of
the importance of what she had just told him, so as to know whether he
might conclude that she had done these things often, and was likely to
do them again. He repeated her words to himself: "I knew quite well what
she was after." "Two or three times." "I've heard that tale before." But
they did not reappear in his memory unarmed; each of them held a knife
with which it stabbed him afresh. For a long time, like a sick man
who cannot restrain himself from attempting, every minute, to make the
movement that, he knows, will hurt him, he kept on murmuring to himself:
"I'm quite happy where I am, thank you," "I've heard that tale before,"
but the pain was so intense that he was obliged to stop. He was amazed
to find that actions which he