For
in this way Swann was kept in that state of painful agitation which had
once before been effective in making his interest blossom into love, on
the night when he had failed to find Odette at the Verdurins' and had
hunted for her all evening. And he did not have (as I had, afterwards, at
Combray in my childhood) happy days in which to forget the sufferings that
would return with the night. For his days, Swann must pass them without
Odette; and as he told himself, now and then, to allow so pretty a woman
to go out by herself in Paris was just as rash as to leave a case filled
with jewels in the middle of the street. In this mood he would scowl
furiously at the passers-by, as though they were so many pickpockets. But
their faces--a collective and formless mass--escaped the grasp of his
imagination, and so failed to feed the flame of his jealousy. The effort
exhausted Swann's brain, until, passing his hand over his eyes, he cried
out: "Heaven help me!" as people, after lashing themselves into an
intellectual frenzy in their endeavours to master the problem of the
reality of the external world, or that of the immortality of the soul,
afford relief to their weary brains by an unreasoning act of faith.
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