Swann's Way

servants' hall, and lay down and shut my eyes, and tried not to hear the
voices of my family who were drinking their coffee in the garden.

But after a few seconds I realised that, by writing that line to Mamma,
by approaching--at the risk of making her angry--so near to her that I
felt I could reach out and grasp the moment in which I should see her
again, I had cut myself off from the possibility of going to sleep
until I actually had seen her, and my heart began to beat more and more
painfully as I increased my agitation by ordering myself to keep calm
and to acquiesce in my ill-fortune. Then, suddenly, my anxiety subsided,
a feeling of intense happiness coursed through me, as when a strong
medicine begins to take effect and one's pain vanishes: I had formed a
resolution to abandon all attempts to go to sleep without seeing Mamma,
and had decided to kiss her at all costs, even with the certainty of
being in disgrace with her for long afterwards, when she herself came
up to bed. The tranquillity which followed my anguish made me extremely
alert, no less than my sense of expectation, my thirst for and my fear
of danger.

Noiselessly I opened the window and sat down on the foot of my bed;