five o'clock in
the afternoon
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 . But Swann was incapable of inventing his sufferings . They were only the memory , the perpetuation of a suffering that had come to him from without . From without , however , everything brought him fresh suffering .