Swann's Way

title-deeds and bonds;--the thought of the banker reminded him that he
must call on him shortly, to draw some money. And indeed, if, during the
current month, he were to come less liberally to the aid of Odette in
her financial difficulties than in the month before, when he had given
her five thousand francs, if he refrained from offering her a diamond
necklace for which she longed, he would be allowing her admiration for
his generosity to decline, that gratitude which had made him so happy,
and would even be running the risk of her imagining that his love
for her (as she saw its visible manifestations grow fewer) had itself
diminished. And then, suddenly, he asked himself whether that was not
precisely what was implied by 'keeping' a woman (as if, in fact, that
idea of 'keeping' could be derived from elements not at all mysterious
nor perverse, but belonging to the intimate routine of his daily life,
such as that thousand-franc note, a familiar and domestic object, torn
in places and mended with gummed paper, which his valet, after paying
the household accounts and the rent, had locked up in a drawer in
the old writing-desk whence he had extracted it to send it, with four