Swann's Way

life of her whom its syllables designated to the happy creatures that
lived and walked and travelled in her company; unfolding through the
arch of the pink hawthorn, which opened at the height of my shoulder,
the quintessence of their familiarity--so exquisitely painful to
myself--with her, and with all that unknown world of her existence, into
which I should never penetrate.

For a moment (while we moved away, and my grandfather murmured: "Poor
Swann, what a life they are leading him; fancy sending him away so
that she can be left alone with her Charlus--for that was Charlus: I
recognised him at once! And the child, too; at her age, to be mixed up
in all that!") the impression left on me by the despotic tone in which
Gilberte's mother had spoken to her, without her replying, by exhibiting
her to me as being obliged to yield obedience to some one else, as not
being indeed superior to the whole world, calmed my sufferings somewhat,
revived some hope in me, and cooled the ardour of my love. But very soon
that love surged up again in me like a reaction by which my humiliated
heart was endeavouring to rise to Gilberte's level, or to draw her down
to its own. I loved her; I was sorry not to have had the time and the