Page 382 - swanns-way

whose taste for the fine arts develops independently of their
sensuality, a grotesque disparity had existed between the
satisfactions which he would accord to either taste simulta-
neously; yielding to the seduction of works of art which grew
more and more subtle as the women in whose company he
enjoyed them grew more illiterate and common, he would
take a little servant-girl to a screened box in a theatre where
there was some decadent piece which he had wished to see
performed, or to an exhibition of impressionist painting,
with the conviction, moreover, that an educated, ‘society’
woman would have understood them no better, but would
not have managed to keep quiet about them so prettily. But,
now that he was in love with Odette, all this was changed;
to share her sympathies, to strive to be one with her in spirit
was a task so attractive that he tried to find satisfaction in
the things that she liked, and did find a pleasure, not only
in copying her habits but in adopting her opinions, which
was all the deeper because, as those habits and opinions
sprang from no roots in her intelligence, they suggested to
him nothing except that love, for the sake of which he had
preferred them to his own. If he went again to Serge Panine,
if he looked out for opportunities of going to watch Olivier
Métra conducting, it was for the pleasure of being initiated
into every one of the ideas in Odette’s mind, of feeling that
he had an equal share in all her tastes. This charm of draw-
ing him closer to her, which her favourite plays and pictures
and places possessed, struck him as being more mysteri-
ous than the intrinsic charm of more beautiful things and
places, which appealed to him by their beauty, but with-

382 Swann’s Way