Page 372 - swanns-way

de Crécy was in the small drawing-room. He would go in
search of her, and, when he opened the door, on Odette’s
blushing countenance, as soon as she caught sight of Swann,
would appear—changing the curve of her lips, the look in
her eyes, the moulding of her cheeks—an all-absorbing
smile. Once he was left alone he would see again that smile,
and her smile of the day before, another with which she had
greeted him sometime else, the smile which had been her
answer, in the carriage that night, when he had asked her
whether she objected to his rearranging her cattleyas; and
the life of Odette at all other times, since he knew noth-
ing of it, appeared to him upon a neutral and colourless
background, like those sheets of sketches by Watteau upon
which one sees, here and there, in every corner and in all
directions, traced in three colours upon the buff paper, in-
numerable smiles. But, once in a while, illuminating a chink
of that existence which Swann still saw as a complete blank,
even if his mind assured him that it was not so, because he
was unable to imagine anything that might occupy it, some
friend who knew them both, and suspecting that they were
in love, had not dared to tell him anything about her that
was of the least importance, would describe Odette’s fig-
ure, as he had seen her, that very morning, going on foot up
the Rue Abbattucci, in a cape trimmed with skunks, wear-
ing a Rembrandt hat, and a bunch of violets in her bosom.
This simple outline reduced Swann to utter confusion by
enabling him suddenly to perceive that Odette had an ex-
istence which was not wholly subordinated to his own; he
burned to know whom she had been seeking to fascinate by

372 Swann’s Way