W. Somerset Maugham 
Merry Go Round 

Looking out upon the backstreets, the suburbs and the high society haunts of Edwardian London, the delightfully witty and independent spinster Miss Ley surveys a tangled web of lives; she sympathetically observes the struggle under the pressures of convention, and the complex interplay between love and reason. Through Miss Ley»s eyes we witness the brief but happy marriage of a dying poet; a woman»s adulterous passion for a young rascal, and finally, an honourable man»s decision to take virtue to extremes.