their vocations almost opposed

Only she couldn't pour it all out on the stage, for she was too young to play Hecuba. The stage was simply the one place offering peace and forgetfulness. She could only tell herself: Time heals all wounds while not believing it. Asking herself why it should go on hurting so. When Dane was alive she hadn't really thought very much about him except when she was with him, and after they were grown up their time together had been limited, their vocations almost opposed. But his going had created a gap so huge she despaired of ever filling it. The shock of having to pull herself up in the midst of a spontaneous reaction-I must remember to tell Dane about this, he'll get such a kick out of it-that was what hurt the most. And because it kept on occurring so often, it prolonged the grief. Had the circumstances surrounding his death been less horrifying she might have recovered more quickly, but the nightmare events of those few days remained vivid. She missed him unbearably; her mind would return again and again to the incredible fact of Dane dead, Dane who would never come back. Then there was the conviction that she hadn't helped him enough. Everyone save her seemed to think he was perfect, didn't experience the troubles other men did, but Justine knew he had been plagued by doubts, had tormented himself with his own unworthiness, had wondered what people could see in him beyond the face and the body. Poor Dane, who never seemed to understand that people loved his goodness. Terrible to remember it was too late to help him now. She also grieved for her mother. If his dying could do this to her, what must it have done to Mum? The thought made her want to run screaming and crying from memory, consciousness. The picture of the Unks in Rome for his ordination, puffing out their proud chests like pouter pigeons. That was the worst of all, visualizing the empty desolation of her mother and the other Drogheda people. Be honest, Justine. Was this honestly the worst? Wasn't there something far more disturbing? She couldn't push the thought of Rain away, or what she felt as her betrayal of Dane. To gratify her own desires she had sent Dane to Greece alone, when to have gone with him might have meant life for him. There was no other way to see it. Dane had died because of her selfish absorption in Rain. Too late now to bring her brother back, but if in never seeing Rain again she could somehow atone, the hunger and the loneliness would be well worth it.