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By Root 1637 0

finding enjoyment in her company one would have to make her suffer, at another so sweet and gentle that one gives her credit for the virtue one attributes to her, and finds in it a fresh reason for hope. But even though the anguish that had re-awakened in me did at length subside, I no longer wished—except rarely—to visit Mme Swann. In the first place because, in those who love and have been forsaken, the state of incessant—even if unconfessed—expectancy in which they live undergoes a spontaneous transformation, and, while to all appearances unchanged, substitutes for its original state a second that is precisely the opposite. The first was the consequence, the reflection of the painful incidents which had upset us. Expectation of what may happen is mingled with fear, all the more since we desire at that moment, should we hear nothing new from the loved one, to act ourselves, and are none too confident of the success of a step which, once we have taken it, we may find it impossible to follow up. But presently, without our having noticed any change, expectation, which still endures, is sustained, we discover, no longer by our recollection of the painful past but by anticipation of an imaginary future. From then on, it is almost pleasant. Besides, the first state, by continuing for some time, has accustomed us to living in expectation. The pain we felt during those last meetings survives in us still, but is already lulled to sleep. We are in no hurry to arouse it, especially as we do not see very clearly what to ask for now. The possession of a little more of the woman we love would only make more necessary to us the part that we do not possess, which would inevitably remain, in spite of everything, since our requirements are begotten of our satisfactions, an irreducible quantity.

Another, final reason came later on to reinforce this, and to make me discontinue altogether my visits to Mme Swann. This reason, slow in revealing itself, was not that I had yet forgotten Gilberte but that I must make every effort to forget her as speedily as possible. No doubt, now that the keen edge of my suffering was dulled, my visits to Mme Swann had become once again, for the residue of my sadness, the sedative and distraction which had been so precious to me at first. But the reason for the efficacy of the former was the drawback of the latter, namely that with these visits the memory of Gilberte was intimately blended. The distraction would be of no avail to me unless it set up, in opposition to a feeling no longer nourished by Gilberte’s presence, thoughts, interests, passions in which Gilberte had no part. These states of consciousness to which the person whom we love remains a stranger then occupy a place which, however small it may be at first, is always that much reconquered from the love that had been in unchallenged possession of our whole soul. We must seek to encourage these thoughts, to make them grow, while the sentiment which is no more now than a memory dwindles, so that the new elements introduced into the mind contest with that sentiment, wrest from it an ever-increasing portion of our soul, until at last the victory is complete. I realised that this was the only way in which my love could be killed, and I was still young enough and brave enough to undertake the attempt, to subject myself to that most cruel grief which springs from the certainty that, however long it may take us, we shall succeed in the end. The reason I now gave in my letters to Gilberte for refusing to see her was an allusion to some mysterious misunderstanding, wholly fictitious, which was supposed to have arisen between her and myself, and as to which I had hoped at first that Gilberte would demand an explanation. But, in fact, never, even in the most insignificant relations in life, does a request for enlightenment come from a correspondent who knows that an obscure, untruthful, incriminating sentence has been introduced on purpose, so that he shall protest against it; he is only too happy to feel thereby that he possesses—and to keep in his own hands