Homecomings by C.P. Snow

EACH morning, as I telephoned Margaret, the winter sky heavy over the trees outside, I heard her forcing her voice to hearten me. At last, so near the time when I trusted her to come to me, I was jealous. I could not stand the thought of her life from day to day, I had to switch my imagination off. I could not stand the thought of her keeping his spirits up; I went through those prosaic miseries of the imagination in which one is tormented by the hearth-glow of another's home, even if it is an unhappy home.

I told myself her part was the harder, but I began to be frightened of the telephone, as though it did nothing but force me to think of her home, of the two of them together.