And yet possibly this particular
manner of saying "to make love" had not the precise significance of its
synonyms. However disillusioned we may be about women, however we may
regard the possession of even the most divergent types as an invariable
and monotonous experience, every detail of which is known and can be
described in advance, it still becomes a fresh and stimulating pleasure if
the women concerned be--or be thought to be--so difficult as to oblige us
to base our attack upon some unrehearsed incident in our relations with
them, as was originally for Swann the arrangement of the cattleyas. He
trembled as he hoped, that evening, (but Odette, he told himself, if she
were deceived by his stratagem, could not guess his intention) that it was
the possession of this woman that would emerge for him from their large
and richly coloured petals; and the pleasure which he already felt, and
which Odette tolerated, he thought, perhaps only because she was not yet
aware of it herself, seemed to him for that reason--as it might have
seemed to the first man when he enjoyed it amid the flowers of the earthly
paradise--a pleasure which had never before existed, which he was striving
now to create, a pleasure--and the special name which he was to give to it
preserved its identity--entirely individual and new.
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