Page 348 - swanns-way

living woman, he converted it into a series of physical mer-
its which he congratulated himself on finding assembled in
the person of one whom he might, ultimately, possess. The
vague feeling of sympathy which attracts a spectator to a
work of art, now that he knew the type, in warm flesh and
blood, of Jethro’s Daughter, became a desire which more
than compensated, thenceforward, for that with which
Odette’s physical charms had at first failed to inspire him.
When he had sat for a long time gazing at the Botticelli, he
would think of his own living Botticelli, who seemed all the
lovelier in contrast, and as he drew towards him the photo-
graph of Zipporah he would imagine that he was holding
Odette against his heart.
It was not only Odette’s indifference, however, that he
must take pains to circumvent; it was also, not infrequent-
ly, his own; feeling that, since Odette had had every facility
for seeing him, she seemed no longer to have very much
to say to him when they did meet, he was afraid lest the
manner—at once trivial, monotonous, and seemingly un-
alterable—which she now adopted when they were together
should ultimately destroy in him that romantic hope, that
a day might come when she would make avowal of her pas-
sion, by which hope alone he had become and would remain
her lover. And so to alter, to give a fresh moral aspect to
that Odette, of whose unchanging mood he was afraid of
growing weary, he wrote, suddenly, a letter full of hinted
discoveries and feigned indignation, which he sent off so
that it should reach her before dinner-time. He knew that
she would be frightened, and that she would reply, and he

348 Swann’s Way