Certainly, of the extent of this love Swann had no direct knowledge. When
he sought to measure it, it happened sometimes that he found it
diminished, shrunken almost to nothing; for instance, the very moderate
liking, amounting almost to dislike, which, in the days before he was in
love with Odette, he had felt for her expressive features, her faded
complexion, returned on certain days. "Really, I am making distinct
headway," he would tell himself on the morrow, "when I come to think it
over carefully, I find out that I got hardly any pleasure, last night, out
of being in bed with her; it's an odd thing, but I actually thought her
ugly." And certainly he was sincere, but his love extended a long way
beyond the province of physical desire. Odette's person, indeed, no longer
held any great place in it. When his eyes fell upon the photograph of
Odette on his table, or when she came to see him, he had difficulty in
identifying her face, either in the flesh or on the pasteboard, with the
painful and continuous anxiety which dwelt in his mind. He would say to
himself, almost with astonishment, "It is she!" as when suddenly some one
shews us in a detached, externalised form one of our own maladies, and we
find in it no resemblance to what we are suffering.
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