Black Oxen by Gertrude Atherton

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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.

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