Page 347 - swanns-way

tering, and where she assumed a new and nobler form. And
whereas the mere sight of her in the flesh, by perpetually
reviving his misgivings as to the quality of her face, her fig-
ure, the whole of her beauty, used to cool the ardour of his
love, those misgivings were swept away and that love con-
firmed now that he could re-erect his estimate of her on the
sure foundations of his aesthetic principles; while the kiss,
the bodily surrender which would have seemed natural and
but moderately attractive, had they been granted him by a
creature of somewhat withered flesh and sluggish blood,
coming, as now they came, to crown his adoration of a mas-
terpiece in a gallery, must, it seemed, prove as exquisite as
they would be supernatural.
And when he was tempted to regret that, for months past,
he had done nothing but visit Odette, he would assure him-
self that he was not unreasonable in giving up much of his
time to the study of an inestimably precious work of art, cast
for once in a new, a different, an especially charming metal,
in an unmatched exemplar which he would contemplate at
one moment with the humble, spiritual, disinterested mind
of an artist, at another with the pride, the selfishness, the
sensual thrill of a collector.
On his study table, at which he worked, he had placed, as
it were a photograph of Odette, a reproduction of Jethro’s
Daughter. He would gaze in admiration at the large eyes,
the delicate features in which the imperfection of her skin
might be surmised, the marvellous locks of hair that fell
along her tired cheeks; and, adapting what he had already
felt to be beautiful, on aesthetic grounds, to the idea of a

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