Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. I, 1889.djvu/211

 I soon learn to do as well as that? Can't I see where it might be made more lifelike? Why should it be impossible for me to go on the stage?" In passing a shop-window where photographs were exposed, she looked for those of actresses, and gazed at them with terrible intensity. "I am as good-looking as she is. Why shouldn't my portrait be seen some day in the windows?" And then her heart throbbed, smitten with passionate desire. As she walked on, there was a turbid gloom about her, and in her ears the echoing of a dread temptation. Of all this she spoke to nobody.

For she had no friends. A couple of years ago something like an intimacy had sprung up between her and Bessie Jones (since married and become Bessie Byass), seemingly on the principle of contrast in association. Bessie, like most London workgirls, was fond of the theatre, and her talk helped to nourish the ambition which was secretly developing in Clara. But the two could not long harmonise, Bessie, just after her marriage, ventured to speak with friendly reproof of Clara's