about five o'clock
if she was doing nothing wrong at that moment how could Forcheville possibly have accounted for her not opening the door ? For a time Swann stood still there , heartbroken , bewildered , and yet happy ; gazing at this envelope which Odette had handed to him without a scruple , so absolute was her trust in his honour ; through its transparent window there had been disclosed to him , with the secret history of an incident which he had despaired of ever being able to learn , a fragment of the life of Odette , seen as through a narrow , luminous incision , cut into its surface without her knowledge . Then his jealousy rejoiced at the discovery , as though that jealousy had had an independent existence , fiercely egotistical , gluttonous of every thing that would feed its vitality , even at the expense of Swann himself . Now it had food in store , and Swann could begin to grow uneasy afresh every evening , over the visits that Odette had received about five o'clock , and could seek to discover where Forcheville had been at that hour . For Swann 's affection for Odette still preserved the form which had been imposed on it , from the beginning , by his ignorance of the occupations in which she passed her days , as well as by the mental lethargy which prevented him from supplementing that ignorance by imagination . He was not jealous , at first , of the whole of Odette 's life , but of those moments only in which an incident , which he had perhaps misinterpreted , had led him to suppose that Odette might have played him false . His jealousy , like an octopus which throws out a first , then a second , and finally a third tentacle , fastened itself irremovably first to that moment , five o'clock in the afternoon , then to another , then to another again .