Swann's Way

three hundred thousand francs out of her before he'd finished." If,
then, Swann tried to shew her in what artistic beauty consisted, how one
ought to appreciate poetry or painting, after a minute or two she would
cease to listen, saying: "Yes... I never thought it would be like that."
And he felt that her disappointment was so great that he preferred to
lie to her, assuring her that what he had said was nothing, that he
had only touched the surface, that he had not time to go into it all
properly, that there was more in it than that. Then she would interrupt
with a brisk, "More in it? What?... Do tell me!", but he did not tell
her, for he realised how petty it would appear to her, and how different
from what she had expected, less sensational and less touching; he was
afraid, too, lest, disillusioned in the matter of art, she might at the
same time be disillusioned in the greater matter of love.

With the result that she found Swann inferior, intellectually, to what
she had supposed. "You're always so reserved; I can't make you out." She
marvelled increasingly at his indifference to money, at his courtesy
to everyone alike, at the delicacy of his mind. And indeed it happens,