Leucothea's veil

. . . and each of these Albertines was different, as in every fresh  appearance of the dancer whose colours, form, character, are transmuted according to the innumerably varied play of a projected limelight. It was perhaps because they were so different, the persons whom I used to contemplate in her at this period, that later on I became myself a different person, corresponding to the particular Albertine to whom my thoughts had turned; a jealous, an indifferent, a voluptuous, a melancholy, a frenzied person, created anew not merely by the accident of what memory had risen to the surface, but in proportion also to the strength of the belief that was lent to the support of one and the same memory by the varying manner in which I appreciated it. For this is the point to which we must always return, to these beliefs with which most of the time we are quite unconsciously filled, but which for all that are of more importance to our happiness than is the average person whom we see, for it is through them that we see him, it is they that impart his momentary greatness to the person seen. To be quite accurate I ought to give a different name to each of the 'me’s' who were to think about Albertine in time to come; I ought still more to give a different name to each of the Albertines who appeared before me, never the same, like -- called by me simply and for the sake of convenience 'the sea'--those seas that succeeded one another on the beach, in front of which, a nymph likewise, she stood apart. But above all, in the same way as, in telling a story (though to far greater purpose here), one mentions what the weather was like on such and such a day, I ought always to give its name to the belief that, on any given day on which I saw Albertine, was reigning in my soul, creating its atmosphere, the appearance of people like that of seas being dependent on those clouds, themselves barely visible, which change the colour of everything by their concentration, their mobility, their dissemination, their flight-- like that cloud which Elstir had rent one evening by not introducing me to these girls, with whom he had stopped to talk, whereupon their forms, as they moved away, had suddenly increased in beauty—a cloud that had formed again a few days later when I did get to know the girls, veiling their brightness, interposing itself frequently between my eyes and them, opaque and soft, like Virgil’s Leucothea. ("Within a Budding Grove" II.346)

Exploring this transformation to the image of Leucothea's veil.  The rough progression of nouns here (skipping a few): 

Albertines 

dancer

colors 

form 

character

play

limelight

persons 

I 

memory

surface

belief

manner

point

time

name

me's

Albertines

sea

beach 

nymph

story 

weather 

day

soul 

atmosphere 

appearance

seas 

clouds 

color

concentration

mobility

dissemination 

flight

cloud 

Elstir

evening 

girls

forms

beauty

cloud 

days

girls

brightness

eyes

Virgil’s

Leucothea

Transformation of images/metaphors:

       We begin with a multiplicity of Albertines.  In each one resides the "appearance of a dancer," with  transforming elements of "colours, form, character"-- changing from shifts in hue to the more radical alterations of shape and essence-- all under the guiding influence of the "limelight."  The image of the dancer provides a sense of movement, lightness, and grace, while the "varied play" of the stage light intentionally directs viewers' attention and alters their perceptions. The dancer becomes a blur of movement and color, leaving us to wonder what could possibly be the "real" nature of the dancer, of Albertine?  But what we can answer about this question, Proust speculates is more about the viewer.  We discern latent pieces surrounding the overall narrative of Albertine, her colors, forms, and characters. Then it is an act of belief to reconcile our narrative to the person under scrutiny, to formulate where the dancer is now and all her past movements into one unfolding dance. Thus the dance emerges from this act of "ris[ing] to the surface" through all the layers of consciousness.  And through surfacing, we move into the next metaphor, the sea.

       Albertine is also like the sea, in that one name simplifies a much more complex entity.  The sea has her mutability as well, and Proust makes her a nymph on the beach under those changes circumstances of clouds and light that form the character of a day, as Proust argues, the very "atmosphere" of the viewer's soul.  What we see by subtle changes in light is not just the moving dancer, nymph, sea, but a changing glimpse of our internal being. Then the focus alters to the clouds themselves: "their mobility, their dissemination, their flight--" as a protective covering shading the otherwise too piercing beauty of the sun's unabashed brightness, parallel to the girls' beauty.  A cloud the narrator finds gives him some safety from too keen a desire-- too keen a vision-- experienced in true Proustian fashion by the narrator wanting what he cannot have.  In the end, this cloud becomes like the "opaque and soft" Leucothea.  More properly the clouds might be Leucothea's veil, but here the "veil" is reserved for the verb "veiling," and the clouds seem to morph into Leucothea herself: her essential grace, her principle of saving.

        Leucothea in The Odyssey was a young woman that became a sea goddess and rescued Odysseus by giving him her veil to wrap around his body and stay afloat in the waves.  Here she connects with Albertine as another young woman and unites the nymph reference, sea metaphor, and cloud/veiling imagery.  Proust transitions us as readers from clouds to the image of her veil: white, soft, covering.  From water vapor to the sea-goddess enfolding the drowning sea-goer to buoy him up in the waves, as the clouds cloak the too brilliant heat and light of desire from the narrator, to also save him from a type of drowning.
Creating atmosphere in the soul.  Saving the soul.