My Years With Proust - Day 626

For if it was not in itself something real, if it arose from the continuously changing shape of the hours in which she had appeared to me, a shape which remained that of my memory as the curve of the projections of my magic lanterns depended on the curve of the coloured slides, did it not in its own way represent a truth, a thoroughly objective truth to, to wit, that none of us is single, that each of us contains many persons who do not all have the same moral value, and that if a vicious Albertine had existed, it did not mean that there had not been others, the Albertine who enjoyed talking to me about Saint-Simon in her room, the Albertine who on the night when I had told her that we must part had said so sadly: "This pianola, this room, to think that I shall never see any of these things again" and, when the she saw the distress which I had finally communicated to myself by my lie, had exclaimed with sincere pity: "Oh, no, anything rather than make you unhappy, I promise that I shall never try to see you again."  Then I was no longer alone; I felt the barrier that separated us vanish.  As soon as this good Albertine had returned, I had found once more the only person who could provide me with the antidote to the sufferings which Albertine was causing me. True, I still wanted to speak to her about the story of the laundry-girl, but no longer in order to score a cruel triumph and to show her maliciously how much I knew. I asked her tenderly, as I should have asked her had she been alive, whether the story about the laundry-girl was true. She swore to me that it was not, that Aime was not very truthful and that, wishing to appear to have earned the money I had given him, he had not liked to return empty-handed, and had made the girl tell him what he wished to hear. No doubt Albertine had never ceased to lie to me.  And yet, in the ebb and flow of her contradictions, I felt that there had been a certain progression due to myself.  That she had not, indeed, confided some of her secrets to me at the beginning (perhaps, it is true, involuntarily, in a remark that escaped her lips) I would not have absolutely sworn.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp. 540-541

Marcel finally begins to understand his role in ruining his relationship with Albertine.  Upon reflection, Marcel realizes that, "I still wanted to speak to her about the story of the laundry-girl, but no longer in order to score a cruel triumph and to show her maliciously how much I knew." Instead, he simply wanted to understand, or, failing that, to just talk to her.  A conversation with his dead love runs through his mind: "I asked her tenderly, as I should have asked her had she been alive, whether the story about the laundry-girl was true." He accepts that she will will lie to him, but also begins to understand how he forces that lie.  With this he realizes, "Then I was no longer alone; I felt the barrier that separated us vanish."