She was only seventeen at the time, outstandingly pretty with a dewy, youthful freshness which she was to lose very quickly. But her head had been packed full of fantastic notions about falling in love and rubbish of that sort. Chrissie had made her see sense, hammered it into her as it were. What a job it had been! She could hear Stella crying now,

‘I can’t! I can’t! He’s so old and horrid!’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Chrissie enquired harshly.

Finally she had won and Stella had given in. For nearly a year they had lived in comfort in a smart little house off Regent’s Park. There was a hired carriage to take Stella to the Theatre, a maid to wait on them. Then like all the other men who were to follow him Stella’s protector grew bored.

‘Why can’t you be amusing?’ Chrissie demanded. ‘Make him laugh! Talk to him!’

‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ Stella complained. ‘We don’t like the same things and his stories always make me yawn.’

Chrissie could remember hitting Stella after that. It was not the first time by any means, nor the last. There was little satisfaction in it, for Stella only cried and said she was sorry.

Tears made her look so unattractive that Chrissie was afraid to evoke them too often in case she lost her job at the Theatre.

The whole thing was heart breaking, Chrissie thought now. If only she could have had Stella’s opportunities, if only she could have had Stella’s face and Stella’s figure. At the thought she turned her face for a moment deeper into the pillow, her thin fingers clutching and crumpling the silk bedspread.

It wasn’t fair that some women should have so much and others nothing. She remembered once overhearing two chorus girls talking about Stella and herself. They had been standing in a dark corner at the back of the stage awaiting their call at a rehearsal and had not noticed her lurking near them in the shadows.

‘You have to hand it to Stella, she’s a good sport,’ one said.

‘Yes, when she gets the chance, but that sister of hers is as mean-fisted as hell,’ the other replied.

‘Oh, her! Don’t speak to me of that monkey-faced lump of misery! She fair gives me the creeps!’

Chrissie had bitten her lips until they bled to prevent herself saying what she thought of them. At the same time, as always when she overheard some insulting reference to her appearance, she felt sick with a heart-burning resentment which would rankle for days.

She couldn’t help what she looked like, could she? She didn’t make herself! She hated those who affronted her with a rabid savagery which made her more unpleasant than usual to the pretty, thoughtless creatures with whom Stella shared a dressing room.