Page 252 - swanns-way

friend took the girl’s head in her hands and placed a kiss on
her brow with a docility prompted by the real affection she
had for Mlle. Vinteuil, as well as by the desire to bring what
distraction she could into the dull and melancholy life of
an orphan.
‘Do you know what I should like to do to that old hor-
ror?’ she said, taking up the photograph. She murmured in
Mlle. Vinteuil’s ear something that I could not distinguish.
‘Oh! You would never dare.’
‘Not dare to spit on it? On that?’ shouted the friend with
deliberate brutality.
I heard no more, for Mlle. Vinteuil, who now seemed
weary, awkward, preoccupied, sincere, and rather sad, came
back to the window and drew the shutters close; but I knew
now what was the reward that M. Vinteuil, in return for all
the suffering that he had endured in his lifetime, on account
of his daughter, had received from her after his death.
And yet I have since reflected that if M. Vinteuil had been
able to be present at this scene, he might still, and in spite
of everything, have continued to believe in his daughter’s
soundness of heart, and that he might even, in so doing,
have been not altogether wrong. It was true that in all Mlle.
Vinteuil’s actions the appearance of evil was so strong and
so consistent that it would have been hard to find it exhib-
ited in such completeness save in what is nowadays called a
‘sadist’; it is behind the footlights of a Paris theatre, and not
under the homely lamp of an actual country house, that one
expects to see a girl leading her friend on to spit upon the
portrait of a father who has lived and died for nothing and

252 Swann’s Way