Alas, he recalled the accents in which she had exclaimed: “But I can see you at any time; I am always free!”⁠—she, who was never free now; the interest, the curiosity that she had shown in his life, her passionate desire that he should do her the favour⁠—of which it was he who, then, had felt suspicious, as of a possibly tedious waste of his time and disturbance of his arrangements⁠—of granting her access to his study; how she had been obliged to beg that he would let her take him to the Verdurins’; and, when he did allow her to come to him once a month, how she had first, before he would let himself be swayed, had to repeat what a joy it would be to her, that custom of their seeing each other daily, for which she had longed at a time when to him it had seemed only a tiresome distraction, for which, since that time, she had conceived a distaste and had definitely broken herself of it, while it had become for him so insatiable, so dolorous a need. Little had he suspected how truly he spoke when, on their third meeting, as she repeated: “But why don’t you let me come to you oftener?” he had told her, laughing, and in a vein of gallantry, that it was for fear of forming a hopeless passion.