Now
this change was his deep, his secret wound, which pained him day and
night, and whenever he felt that his thoughts were straying too near it,
he would quickly turn them into another channel for fear of being made to
suffer too keenly. He might say to himself in a vague way: "There was a
time when Odette loved me more," but he never formed any definite picture
of that time. Just as he had in his study a cupboard at which he contrived
never to look, which he turned aside to avoid passing whenever he entered
or left the room, because in one of its drawers he had locked away the
chrysanthemum which she had given him on one of those first evenings when
he had taken her home in his carriage, and the letters in which she said:
"Why did you not forget your heart also? I should never have let you have
that back," and "At whatever hour of the day or night you may need me,
just send me a word, and dispose of me as you please," so there was a
place in his heart to which he would never allow his thoughts to trespass
too near, forcing them, if need be, to evade it by a long course of
reasoning so that they should not have to pass within reach of it; the
place in which lingered his memories of happy days.
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