Corridors of Power by C.P. Snow

During those days before the debate, Roger, whenever he went into the House or the Treasury Building or Downing Street, was under inspection: inspection often neither friendly nor unfriendly, but excited by the smell of human drama: the kind of inspection that I remembered my mother being subjected to, in the provincial back streets, when we were going bankrupt – but it was also just as much a predilection of the old Norse heroes, who, on hearing that your house had been burned down, with you inside, were interested, not in your fate, but in how you had comported yourself.

As they watched him, Roger behaved well. He was a brave man, physically and morally, people were saying. It was true. Nevertheless, on those mornings he could not bring himself to read the political correspondents' gossip-columns. He listened to accounts of what they said, but could not read them. Though he walked through the lobbies, bulky and composed, cordial to men whom he suspected, he could not manage to invite the opinions of his own nearest supporters. He sat at his desk in the office, staring distantly at me, as though his articulateness and self-knowledge had both gone.