My agony was soothed; I let myself be borne upon the current of this
gentle night on which I had my mother by my side. I knew that such a night
could not be repeated; that the strongest desire I had in the world,
namely, to keep my mother in my room through the sad hours of darkness,
ran too much counter to general requirements and to the wishes of others
for such a concession as had been granted me this evening to be anything
but a rare and casual exception. To-morrow night I should again be the
victim of anguish and Mamma would not stay by my side. But when these
storms of anguish grew calm I could no longer realise their existence;
besides, tomorrow evening was still a long way off; I reminded myself that
I should still have time to think about things, albeit that remission of
time could bring me no access of power, albeit the coming event was in no
way dependent upon the exercise of my will, and seemed not quite
inevitable only because it was still separated from me by this short
interval.
* * *
And so it was that, for a long time afterwards, when I lay awake at night
and revived old memories of Combray, I saw no more of it than this sort of
luminous panel, sharply defined against a vague and shadowy background,
like the panels which a Bengal fire or some electric sign will illuminate
and dissect from the front of a building the other parts of which remain
plunged in darkness: broad enough at its base, the little parlour, the
dining-room, the alluring shadows of the path along which would come M.
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