sure? Don't say to me, 'You
know quite well'; say, 'I have never done anything of that sort with any
woman.'"

She repeated his words like a lesson learned by rote, and as though she
hoped, thereby, to be rid of him: "I have never done anything of that
sort with any woman."

"Can you swear it to me on your Laghetto medal?"

Swann knew that Odette would never perjure herself on that.

"Oh, you do make me so miserable," she cried, with a jerk of her body
as though to shake herself free of the constraint of his question. "Have
you nearly done? What is the matter with you to-day? You seem to have
made up your mind that I am to be forced to hate you, to curse you!
Look, I was anxious to be friends with you again, for us to have a nice
time together, like the old days; and this is all the thanks I get!"

However, he would not let her go, but sat there like a surgeon who waits
for a spasm to subside that has interrupted his operation but need not
make him abandon it.

"You are quite wrong in supposing that I bear you the least ill-will in
the world, Odette," he began with a persuasive and deceitful gentleness.
"I never speak to you except of what I already know, and I always know a
great deal more than I say. But you alone can mollify by your confession
what makes me hate you so long as it has been reported to me only by
other people. My anger with you is never due to your actions--I can
and do forgive you everything because I love you--but to your
untruthfulness, the ridiculous untruthfulness which makes you persist in
denying things which I know to be true. 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 thos