But in this strange phase of
love the personality of another person becomes so enlarged, so deepened,
that the curiosity which he could now feel aroused in himself, to know the
least details of a woman's daily occupation, was the same thirst for
knowledge with which he had once studied history. And all manner of
actions, from which, until now, he would have recoiled in shame, such as
spying, to-night, outside a window, to-morrow, for all he knew, putting
adroitly provocative questions to casual witnesses, bribing servants,
listening at doors, seemed to him, now, to be precisely on a level with
the deciphering of manuscripts, the weighing of evidence, the
interpretation of old monuments, that was to say, so many different
methods of scientific investigation, each one having a definite
intellectual value and being legitimately employable in the search for
truth.
As his hand stole out towards the shutters he felt a pang of shame at the
thought that Odette would now know that he had suspected her, that he had
returned, that he had posted himself outside her window. She had often
told him what a horror she had of jealous men, of lovers who spied.
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