The magic ring which Marcel Proust drew, almost literally, round his readers—since it is in the circle of “_le temps perdu_” which is to become “_le temps retrouvé_” that he sets us and himself—seemed early in the incantation to betray a break whereby we might escape, did we so wish, from his compulsion. For, enthralled as we had been by _Swann_, there was a sensible relaxing of the spell with the _Jeunes Filles_. Not in the opening pages, where the atmosphere that we had rapturously learned to breathe was potent still with its intoxicating magic; but when we came to Balbec, and the group of seaside girls began to show as rulers of the scene, there was scarce one of us who did not own to disappointment. _La petite bande_, more actual and, on the surface, more alluring than _la petite phrase_ in the sonata of Vinteuil, yet wholly failed to charm the sense or the imagination as the enigmatic little group of notes had charmed. We heard, and we responded to, the cry: “Those flappers are so tedious!”—and as Albertine grew more and more significant, _we_ grew more sceptical, and told ourselves that we could step outside the ring at any moment we might choose. But somehow, that emancipative moment never came. Despite the blinding print of the edition in a single volume—print that must have permanently injured our collective sight—there always was a reason why we could not break away. And finally, we realised that we were wrong, and that the spell had but become more absolute, in both the shades of meaning in that word. For now that some of the more normal baits for interest were laid aside, we could perceive that here was sorcery in its pure state—the thing itself, stripped of all seeming. Now we could not so easily, or easily at all, “say why” when the profane inquired of us what the magic was—why, reading Proust, we were so interested. We were _not_ so interested; we could scarcely say, or even think, that we were “interested” any more.