mountains at this season will appeal to
them. I'll call up Gora first."

He was crossing the room to the telephone when Mr. Dinwiddie said
hesitatingly: "And so--so--you're really going to marry Mary? Have you
thought what it means? I mean your own career. She'll never live
here--she's out of the picture and knows it."

Clavering took down the receiver and called Miss Dwight's number. Mr.
Dinwiddie sighed and shrugged his shoulders. But his eyes were bright.
He would have a love drama under his very nose.

XLV

Mary's "headache" had continued for two days, but Clavering came to her
house by appointment that same afternoon at five o'clock. She kept him
waiting fully ten minutes, and wandered back and forth in her room
upstairs with none of her usual eagerness to welcome him after even a
brief separation. The violence of her revulsion had passed, but she
was filled with a vast depression, apathetic, tired, in no mood for
love-making. Nor did she feel up to acting, and Clavering's intuitions
were often very inconvenient. He would never suspect the black turmoil
of these past two days, nor its cause, but it would be equally
disconcerting if he attributed her low spirits to the arrival of
Hohenhauer. What a fool she had been to have made more than a glancing
reference to that last old love-affair, almost forgotten until that
night of stark revelation. She must have enjoyed talking about herself
more than she had realized, unable to resist the temptation to indulge
in imposing details. Or self-justification? Perhaps. It didn't
matter, and he must have "placed" Hohenhauer at once this morning, and
would imagine that she was depressed at the thought of meeting him.
There was no one on earth she wanted to meet less, although she felt a
good deal of curiosity as to the object of his visit to Washington.

She heard the maid in the dressing-room and was visited by an
inspiration. She called in the woman, gave her a key and told her to
go down to the dining-room and bring her a glass of curacoa from the
wine-cupboard.

The liqueur sent a glow of warmth through her veins and raised her
spirits. Then, reflecting that Clavering never rushed at her in the
fashion of most lovers, nor even greeted her with a perfunctory kiss,
but waited until the mood for love-making attacked him suddenly, she
took a last look at her new tea-gown of corn-flower blue chiffon and
went down stairs with a light step.

"Shockin