John McCormack, his own life story

If he loved Penny, and he was still certain that he had, he should have accepted her as she was… but he'd not been willing to do that. He'd had to try reforming her, changing her, polishing her. He shrugged. Live and learn, he thought. Live and learn. Again, John Whitmore picked up the silver pen and tapped the desk reflectively with it. He had learned nothing, he decided. And, as for living, how could he live without Penny? The answer to that was obvious. He couldn't. On the other hand, he couldn't live with her. And so here he was, sitting behind his fancy polished desk from which he directed the destinies of hundreds, unable to control his own life. His mind wandered back to those early days when he had first met Penny, to that first night she had gone with him to a hotel. He'd been a student then, living in one of the colleges at his university, spied upon, he had always thought, by the housemasters. Taking Penny back to his room had been out of the question. But there were plenty of small hotels around and they had gone to one of those ...»