Swann inspired in me suddenly an affection so compelling that I had difficulty in restraining myself from kissing his gentle hands, white and crumpled, which looked as though they had been left lying too long in water. I even sketched in the air an outline of that impulsive movement, but this I supposed that I alone had observed. For it is difficult for any of us to calculate exactly on what scale his words or his gestures are apparent to others. Partly from the fear of exaggerating our own importance, and also because we enlarge to enormous proportions the field over which the impressions formed by other people in the course of their lives are obliged to extend, we imagine that the accessories of our speech and attitudes scarcely penetrate the consciousness, still less remain in the memory of those with whom we converse. It is, we may suppose, to a prompting of this sort that criminals yield when they “touch up” the wording of a statement already made, thinking that the new variant cannot be confronted with any existing version.