. . . There were other more attractive novelties in her; I sensed, in this same pretty girl who had just sat down by my bed, something that was different; and in those lines which, in the look and the features of the face, express a person's habitual volition, a change of front, a partial conversion, as though something had happened to break down those resistances I had come up against in Balbec one long-ego evening when we had formed a couple asymmetrical with but the converse of our present arrangement, for then it had been she who was lying down and I by her bedside. Wishing and not daring to ascertain whether she would now let herself be kissed, every time that she rose to go I asked her to stay a little longer. This was a concession not very easy to obtain, for although she had nothing to do (otherwise she would have rushed out of the house) she was a person methodical in her habits and moreover not very gracious towards me, seeming no longer to take pleasure in my company. Yet each time, after looking at her watch, she sat down again at my request until finally she had spent several hours with me without my having asked her for anything; the things I said to her were connected with those I had said during the preceding hours, and were totally unconnected with what I was thinking about, what I desired from her, remained obstinately parallel thereto. There is nothing like desire for preventing the things one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in one's mind. Time passes, and yet it seems as though we were seeking to gain time by speaking of subjects absolutely alien to the one that preoccupies us. We go on chatting, whereas the sentence we should like to utter would have been accompanied by a gesture, if indeed we have not (to give ourselves the pleasure of immediate action and to gratify the curiosity we feel as to the reactions which will follow it, without saying a word, without a by-your-leave) already made this gesture. Certainly I was not in the least in love with Albertine; child of the mists outside, she could simply satisfy the fanciful desire which the change of weather had awakened in me and which was midway between the desires that are satisfied by the arts of the kitchens and the monumental sculpture respectively, for it made me dream simultaneously of mingling with my flesh a substance different and warm, and of attaching at some point of my recumbent body a divergent one, as the body of Eve barely holds by the feet to the side of Adam, to whose body hers is almost perpendicular, in those Romanesque bas-reliefs in the church at Balbec which represent in so noble and reposeful a fashion, still almost like a classical frieze, the creation of woman; God in them is everywhere, followed, as by two ministers, by two little angels in whom one recognises - like those winged, swarming summer creatures which winter has caught by surprise and spared - cupids from Herculaneum still surviving well into the thirteenth century, and winging their last slow flight, weary but never failing in the grace that might be expected of them, over the whole front of the porch.
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 366-367
As we've been discussing Albertine has reappeared in Marcel's life. One of their last meeting was his disastrous attempt to make love to her the night she stayed in his hotel. Either she changed her mind or he magnificently misread her signals. Now, however, things seem to have changed. "I sensed, in this same pretty girl who had just sat down by my bed, something that was different; and in those lines which, in the look and the features of the face, express a person's habitual volition, a change of front, a partial conversion, as though something had happened to break down those resistances I had come up against in Balbec . . ." Of course, the change may be in Marcel himself, who now claims that he no longer loves Albertine. He tells us, "Certainly I was not in the least in love with Albertine; child of the mists outside, she could simply satisfy the fanciful desire which the change of weather had awakened in me . . ." Rather, he now views her as a vessel for his wanderlust, maybe even more than his lust, caused by the changing season. Is this seeming disdainful cruelty based on his embarrassment for his earlier folly? Or does he still love her, but has to pretend, either consciously or unconsciously, that he is over her - so over her that he can just use her - to vouchsafe his maturity and sophistication? Or does he truly desire her, and, like the rest of us, this shatters the connection between cause and effect: "There is nothing like desire for preventing the things one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in one's mind."
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