Page 559 - swanns-way

so far as Mme. Verdurin was concerned, it was a sheer im-
possibility. From the fact that Odette did occasionally tell a
lie, it was not fair to conclude that she never, by any chance,
told the truth, and in these bantering conversations with
Mme. Verdurin which she herself had repeated to Swann,
he could recognize those meaningless and dangerous pleas-
antries which, in their inexperience of life and ignorance
of vice, women often utter (thereby certifying their own
innocence), who—as, for instance, Odette,—would be the
last people in the world to feel any undue affection for one
another. Whereas, on the other hand, the indignation with
which she had scattered the suspicions which she had unin-
tentionally brought into being, for a moment, in his mind
by her story, fitted in with everything that he knew of the
tastes, the temperament of his mistress. But at that moment,
by an inspiration of jealousy, analogous to the inspiration
which reveals to a poet or a philosopher, who has nothing,
so far, but an odd pair of rhymes or a detached observation,
the idea or the natural law which will give power, mastery to
his work, Swann recalled for the first time a remark which
Odette had made to him, at least two years before: ‘Oh,
Mme. Verdurin, she won’t hear of anything just now but
me. I’m a ‘love,’ if you please, and she kisses me, and wants
me to go with her everywhere, and call her by her Chris-
tian name.’ So far from seeing in these expressions any
connection with the absurd insinuations, intended to create
an atmosphere of vice, which Odette had since repeated to
him, he had welcomed them as a proof of Mme. Verdurin’s
warm-hearted and generous friendship. But now this old

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