Autumn Sowing

the long version

"Mr Keeling, a virile and prosperous business man of fifty, of strong Puritan principles, and well-respected in his community, begins at the height of his success and prosperity, to feel a sense of dissatisfaction. He has an expensive home, ugly though grandly furnished, three grownup children, none of them distinguished by any unusual quality, and a sluggish wife, who is a garrulous disconnected talker, and inclined to be snobbish. In these he finds no companionship, nothing to appease a vague hunger that has arisen in him. He has, however, his "secret garden," which is his silent name for his library, crowded with beautiful, expensive books. Here he spends his leisure happily. But even here he is lonely. Just as he grows conscious of his vague hunger, he secures a highly efficient young woman as secretary. She too is fond of books, and, very gradually, begins unknowingly to mean to him the companionship he needs so badly. She, on her part, at first dislikes him with an intense contempt for his caddish qualities. This feeling changes into admiration, then into a pure and glowing love, rushing headlong into a passionate alliance, they brush aside the possibility of "what might have been.." The girl goes away to London, he plunges deeply into work, each keeping of the other an unsullied memory." -- E.F. Benson webpage.