Sorrell and Son by Warwick Deeping

At the reception after the wedding a few of those who best knew Stephen Sorrell noticed a peculiar change in him after the first flush of the crowd's congratulations. He drew a little apart beside an unoccupied sofa, and stood there behind it with an indescribable and vacant look in his eyes. He was very pale. And some of those who loved him well thought that he had drawn apart to bear within himself the stress of some lonely emotion. They left him there, to come back to the smiling occasion when he could bear to smile with the crowd.

It was Tom Roland who saw Sorrell make that surreptitious yet hurried move towards a table where a waiter was filling champagne glasses. Sorrell almost snatched at a glass and drank it, one hand bearing heavily upon the table. He reached for a second glass and drank that also with little painful gulps.