Her Infinite Variety Read Online Free PDF Page B

Mrs. Hoyt approved of her but only after a very shrewd appraisal. She knew that Trevor's mother had listened to her talking even when she hadn't appeared to, as this remark of hers revealed:
    "I enjoy so hearing you and Trevor discuss things with each other. It's not like other boys and girls at all! You really listen to each other. You actually communicate!"
    But did they? Clara was beginning to wonder about that. It was not that Trevor lacked interest in herself or any keenness of observation. He would even on occasion show surprisingly detailed knowledge on subjects that she would have thought beneath or beyond his interests: obscure points of family genealogy, quaint historical incidents, famous scandals, exotic scenes from old movies. And he wanted to know all kinds of things about her own life: her courses at Vassar, her plans for the future, her politics, her interest in advertising. But there still seemed a curious lack of intimacy between them. Was it that he was like a director trying her out for a role? That he wasn't really interested in Clarabel Longcope, but only in a future Mrs. Trevor Hoyt? And that he was beginning to be satisfied that he was now in possession of all her secrets, or at least of all that he had need of?
    But wasn't this what every woman suspected—if she wasn't an utter fool or unless he was—in the man who was courting her? Didn't he have every right to find out just what he was getting into? Wasn't she simply encountering an essential in the basic relationship of every man and woman? And might not an ultimate failure of intimacy be precisely the eternal difference between the sexes? Mightn't it even be love? Why else did she want to batter herself against the wall of his impenetrable armor, to press her soft body against his hard one? What else did any woman want? Why just that, of course.
    On the weekend when she came home to tell her parents that she and Trevor were engaged, she embraced her mother and then whispered in her ear, so that her father wouldn't hear: "Now you can chant your
Nunc Dimittis!
"

3
    T HE PASSAGE of two years found Mrs. Trevor Hoyt very comfortably settled in what she liked to think of as the elegant
boîte
of a tiny duplex on Park Avenue and the weekend mistress of the tastefully redecorated red brick gatehouse of her parents-in-law's Georgian mansion on Long Island's north shore. A year-old daughter, Sandra, was well cared for by a full-time nurse, and, as a cook-housekeeper did all the rest, Clara found that she had time on her hands.

    It was Polly Milton, now an assistant society editor of
Style Magazine,
who suggested that she join the staff there.
    "There's a slot open working for the features editor, and I think you might find yourself the round peg."
    Clara was tempted. A women's magazine had not been what she had dreamed of in her Vassar years, but no doors had been opened to her in her Hoyt world but those of charitable causes which her mother-in-law was indeed only too willing to fling wide. But these she had stubbornly resisted. They were all too much of what was expected of the wife of a rising young banker. Neither of her sisters-in-law would have considered working on
Style.
It would have been deemed "tacky" or "fancy-pants" by people who hunted with the Westbury hounds on weekends or watched polo.
    "Of course, I'll have to talk to Trevor."
    When she brought it up that night over a cocktail, he gave it his immediate and full attention. He asked some probing questions about the nature of the job.
    "It sounds okay to me," he said at last. "And I agree that you ought to do something with that fine mental instrument of yours. Let's see what Mother says."
    This was to be expected. It was not subservience; it was rank. Sometimes only her husband needed to be consulted; at others he and his mother; on rare ones Mr. Hoyt as well. Clara had so far had little trouble with the hierarchy, but she was aware that the time might come.
    Marriage and the