Swann's Way

of what people would think, she did actually manage to see Swann, the
predominant quality in her attitude, now, was self-assurance; a striking
contrast, perhaps an unconscious revenge for, perhaps a natural reaction
from the timorous emotion which, in the early days of their friendship,
she had felt in his presence, and even in his absence, when she began a
letter to him with the words: "My dear, my hand trembles so that I can
scarcely write." (So, at least, she pretended, and a little of that
emotion must have been sincere, or she would not have been anxious to
enlarge and emphasise it.) So Swann had been pleasing to her then. Our
hands do not tremble except for ourselves, or for those whom we love.
When they have ceased to control our happiness how peaceful, how easy,
how bold do we become in their presence! In speaking to him, in writing
to him now, she no longer employed those words by which she had
sought to give herself the illusion that he belonged to her, creating
opportunities for saying "my" and "mine" when she referred to him: "You
are all that I have in the world; it is the perfume of our friendship, I
shall keep it," nor spoke to him of the future, of death itself, as of