Pillion Riders — Elisabeth Russell Taylor

Opal, gamine and sensitive, has been married off by her father to an elderly business associate, Helmut Gressinger, and lives an encapsulated life of luxury in London. When Helmut takes her to Paris, she falls passionately in love with a young French composer of scant means and morals. Opal's husband is kind and caring, but Jean-Claude, her lover, is melancholic, secretive, and often unkind. Opal goes on to explore the conflict in the predictably painful demands of passion and morality, and the battle between head and heart.