so different; but at least you can try to be the same. What difference
has it made between you and me anyhow?... What difference need it
make? I have got my chance now, and I am going to be a brilliant
success, instead of a struggling beginner. What does the rest matter
between you and me?"

"It doesn't matter between you and me. But it matters to you. I feel
I'd give my right hand if you hadn't done it."

"How could I help doing it? Oh, I can't explain; it's no use. We all
have to fight our own battles in the long run - friends or no friends.
Only the friends worth having stick to one, even when it has been a
nasty, unpleasant sort of battle."

That hard look, with the hopelessness behind it, was coming back into
Lorraine's eyes. She was too loyal to tell even Hal what her mother
had been like the last few months before the critical moment came, and
at the critical moment itself. She could not explain just how many
difficulties her marriage had seemed a way out from.

There had been other men who had not proposed marriage. There had been
insistent creditors - her mother's as well as her own. There had been
that deep hunger for something approaching a real home, and for a sense
of security, in a life necessarily full of insecurities.

Obdurate, difficult theatre managers, powerful, jealous
fellow-actresses, ill health, bad luck! Behind the glamour and the
glitter of the stage, what a world of carking care, of littleness,
meanness, jealousy, and intrigue she had found herself called upon to
do battle with.