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By Root 1897 0

that I wanted to take advantage of the fact that I was up to go and see some of my friends, Mme de Villeparisis, Mme de Guermantes, the Cambremers, anyone, in short, whom I might find at home. I omitted to mention only the people whom I did intend to visit, the Verdurins. I asked her if she would like to come with me. She pleaded that she had no suitable clothes. “Besides, my hair is so awful. Do you really want me to go on doing it like this?” And by way of farewell she held out her hand to me in that brusque fashion, the arm outstretched, the shoulders thrust back, which she used to adopt on the beach at Balbec and had since entirely abandoned. This forgotten gesture transformed the body which it animated into that of the Albertine who as yet scarcely knew me. It restored to Albertine, ceremonious beneath an air of brusqueness, her initial novelty, her mystery, even her setting. I saw the sea behind this girl whom I had never seen shake hands with me in this way since I was at the seaside. “My aunt thinks it ages me,” she added glumly. “Would that her aunt were right!” thought I. “That Albertine by looking like a child should make Mme Bontemps appear younger than she is, is all that her aunt would ask, and also that Albertine should cost her nothing between now and the day when, by marrying me, she will bring her in money.” But that Albertine should appear less young, less pretty, should turn fewer heads in the street, that is what I, on the contrary, hoped. For the agedness of a duenna is less reassuring to a jealous lover than that of the face of the woman he loves. I regretted only that the style in which I had asked her to do her hair should appear to Albertine an additional bolt on the door of her prison. And it was again this new domestic feeling that never ceased, even when I was away from Albertine, to bind me to her.

I said to Albertine, who was disinclined, as she had told me, to accompany me to the Guermantes’ or the Cambremers’, that I was not quite sure where I might go, and set off for the Verdurins’. At the moment when, on leaving the house, the thought of the concert that I was going to hear brought back to my mind the scene that afternoon: “grand pied de grue, grand pied de grue”—a scene of disappointed love, of jealous love perhaps, but if so as bestial as the scene to which (minus the words) a woman might be subjected by an orang-outang that was, if one may so say, enamoured of her—at the moment when, having reached the street, I was about to hail a cab, I heard the sound of sobs which a man who was sitting upon a curbstone was endeavouring to stifle. I came nearer; the man, whose face was buried in his hands, appeared to be quite young, and I was surprised to see, from the gleam of white in the opening of his cloak, that he was wearing evening clothes and a white tie. On hearing me he uncovered a face bathed in tears, but at once, having recognised me, turned away. It was Morel. He saw that I had recognised him and, checking his tears with an effort, told me that he had stopped for a moment because he was in such anguish.

“I have grossly insulted, this very day,” he said, “a person for whom I had the strongest feelings. It was a vile thing to do, for she loves me.”

“She will forget perhaps, in time,” I replied, without realising that by speaking thus I made it apparent that I had overheard the scene that afternoon. But he was so absorbed in his grief that it never even occurred to him that I might know something about the affair.

“She may forget, perhaps,” he said. “But I myself can never forget. I feel such a sense of shame, I’m so disgusted with myself! However, what I have said I have said, and nothing can unsay it. When people make me lose my temper, I don’t know what I’m doing. And it’s so bad for me, my nerves are all tied up in knots”—for, like all neurotics, he was keenly interested in his own health. If, during the afternoon, I had witnessed the amorous rage of an infuriated animal, this evening, within a few hours, centuries had elapsed and a new sentiment, a sentiment of shame, regret,