Page 424 - swanns-way

laughing at him, as sharing with that other the knowledge
of how effectively he had been tricked, now it was he that
saw them, confident and persistent in their error, tricked
and trapped by none other than himself, whom they be-
lieved to be a mile away, but who was there, in person, there
with a plan, there with the knowledge that he was going,
in another minute, to tap upon the shutter. And, perhaps,
what he felt (almost an agreeable feeling) at that moment
was something more than relief at the solution of a doubt,
at the soothing of a pain; was an intellectual pleasure. If,
since he had fallen in love, things had recovered a little of
the delicate attraction that they had had for him long ago—
though only when a light was shed upon them by a thought,
a memory of Odette—now it was another of the faculties,
prominent in the studious days of his youth, that Odette
had quickened with new life, the passion for truth, but for
a truth which, too, was interposed between himself and his
mistress, receiving its light from her alone, a private and
personal truth the sole object of which (an infinitely pre-
cious object, and one almost impersonal in its absolute
beauty) was Odette—Odette in her activities, her environ-
ment, her projects, and her past. At every other period in
his life, the little everyday words and actions of another per-
son had always seemed wholly valueless to Swann; if gossip
about such things were repeated to him, he would dismiss it
as insignificant, and while he listened it was only the lowest,
the most commonplace part of his mind that was interested;
at such moments he felt utterly dull and uninspired. But in
this strange phase of love the personality of another per-

424 Swann’s Way