Corridors of Power by C.P. Snow

It was the morning after Roger had talked to me in the Park, and Margaret and I were sitting at breakfast. From the table, I could look down at the slips of garden running behind the Tyburn chapel. I glanced across at my wife, young-looking in her dressing-gown, fresh, not made up. Sometimes I laughed at her for looking so fresh in the morning: for in fact it was I who woke up easily, while she was slumbrous, not at her best, until she had sat beside the window and drunk her first cups of tea.

That morning she was not too slumbrous to read my expression. She knew that I was worrying, and asked me why. At once I told her Roger's story. I didn't think twice about telling her; we had no secrets, I wanted to confide. She wasn't intimate with Roger as I was, nor with Caro either, and I didn't expect her to be specially concerned. To my surprise, her colour rose. Her cheeks flushed, making her eyes look bluer still. She muttered: ‘Damn him.'