Page 346 - swanns-way

curving line from the skein to the ball, where he mingled
the cadence of her neck with the spring of her hair and the
droop of her eyelids, as though from a portrait of herself, in
which her type was made clearly intelligible.
He stood gazing at her; traces of the old fresco were ap-
parent in her face and limbs, and these he tried incessantly,
afterwards, to recapture, both when he was with Odette, and
when he was only thinking of her in her absence; and, albeit
his admiration for the Florentine masterpiece was probably
based upon his discovery that it had been reproduced in her,
the similarity enhanced her beauty also, and rendered her
more precious in his sight. Swann reproached himself with
his failure, hitherto, to estimate at her true worth a creature
whom the great Sandro would have adored, and counted
himself fortunate that his pleasure in the contemplation of
Odette found a justification in his own system of aesthetic.
He told himself that, in choosing the thought of Odette as
the inspiration of his dreams of ideal happiness, he was not,
as he had until then supposed, falling back, merely, upon
an expedient of doubtful and certainly inadequate value,
since she contained in herself what satisfied the utmost re-
finement of his taste in art. He failed to observe that this
quality would not naturally avail to bring Odette into the
category of women whom he found desirable, simply be-
cause his desires had always run counter to his aesthetic
taste. The words ‘Florentine painting’ were invaluable to
Swann. They enabled him (gave him, as it were, a legal title)
to introduce the image of Odette into a world of dreams and
fancies which, until then, she had been debarred from en-

346 Swann’s Way