Homecomings by C.P. Snow

AFTER that second meeting, and before we could contrive another, a chance to be unclandestine came along, for we were invited to the same wedding-party. In itself, the occasion would have been startling enough: when I saw the invitation I felt fooled. The party was to announce the marriage that had taken place, weeks before, in secret – the marriage of Gilbert Cooke and Betty Vane.

As I walked along the river to the house they had borrowed for the night, a house near Whistler's, which in those years had become just a place to be hired, I was both elated, because of Margaret, and faintly sad, self-indulgently in tune with the autumn night. It was drizzling and warm, the leaves slippery on the pavement, the smell of must all round; it was an autumn night which held more sensual promise than the spring.