Page 435 - swanns-way

the faces of some of the women created by the painter of the
Trimavera.’ She had, at that moment, their downcast, heart-
broken expression, which seems ready to succumb beneath
the burden of a grief too heavy to be borne, when they are
merely allowing the Infant Jesus to play with a pomegran-
ate, or watching Moses pour water into a trough. He had
seen the same sorrow once before on her face, but when, he
could no longer say. Then, suddenly, he remembered it; it
was when Odette had lied, in apologising to Mme. Verdurin
on the evening after the dinner from which she had stayed
away on a pretext of illness, but really so that she might be
alone with Swann. Surely, even had she been the most scru-
pulous of women, she could hardly have felt remorse for
so innocent a lie. But the lies which Odette ordinarily told
were less innocent, and served to prevent discoveries which
might have involved her in the most terrible difficulties with
one or another of her friends. And so, when she lied, smit-
ten with fear, feeling herself to be but feebly armed for her
defence, unconfident of success, she was inclined to weep
from sheer exhaustion, as children weep sometimes when
they have not slept. She knew, also, that her lie, as a rule, was
doing a serious injury to the man to whom she was telling
it, and that she might find herself at his mercy if she told it
badly. Therefore she felt at once humble and culpable in his
presence. And when she had to tell an insignificant, social
lie its hazardous associations, and the memories which it re-
called, would leave her weak with a sense of exhaustion and
penitent with a consciousness of wrongdoing.
What depressing lie was she now concocting for Swann’s

435