How can you expect that I shall continue to love you,
when I see you maintain, when I hear you swear to me a thing which I know
to be false? Odette, do not prolong this moment which is torturing us
both. If you are willing to end it at once, you shall be free of it for
ever. Tell me, upon your medal, yes or no, whether you have ever done
those things."
"How on earth can I tell?" she was furious. "Perhaps I have, ever so long
ago, when I didn't know what I was doing, perhaps two or three times."
Swann had prepared himself for all possibilities. Reality must, therefore,
be something which bears no relation to possibilities, any more than the
stab of a knife in one's body bears to the gradual movement of the clouds
overhead, since those words "two or three times" carved, as it were, a
cross upon the living tissues of his heart. A strange thing, indeed, that
those words, "two or three times," nothing more than a few words, words
uttered in the air, at a distance, could so lacerate a man's heart, as if
they had actually pierced it, could sicken a man, like a poison that he
had drunk. Instinctively Swann thought of the remark that he had heard at
Mme.
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