At that time he had been satisfying a
sensual curiosity to know what were the pleasures of those people who
lived for love alone. He had supposed that he could stop there, that he
would not be obliged to learn their sorrows also; how small a thing the
actual charm of Odette was now in comparison with that formidable terror
which extended it like a cloudy halo all around her, that enormous anguish
of not knowing at every hour of the day and night what she had been doing,
of not possessing her wholly, at all times and in all places! Alas, he
recalled the accents in which she had exclaimed: "But I can see you at any
time; I am always free!"--she, who was never free now; the interest, the
curiosity that she had shewn in his life, her passionate desire that he
should do her the favour--of which it was he who, then, had felt
suspicious, as of a possibly tedious waste of his time and disturbance of
his arrangements--of granting her access to his study; how she had been
obliged to beg that he would let her take him to the Verdurins'; and, when
he did allow her to come to him once a month, how she had first, before he
would let himself be swayed, had to repeat what a joy it would be to her,
that custom of their seeing each other daily, for which she had longed at
a time when to him it had seemed only a tiresome distraction, for which,
since that time, she had conceived a distaste and had definitely broken
herself of it, while it had become for him so insatiable, so dolorous a
need.
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