"So he has," George Woods agreed.
"It's a great stone, isn't it, Sophie?" Watty said.
"I haven't seen it yet," Sophie said. "Michael said he'd get Potch to show it to me to-night."
"Not seen it?" George gasped. "Not seen the big opal! Say, boys"--he turned to Pony-Fence, and the Crosses--"I reck'n we'll have to stay for this. Sophie hasn't seen Potch's opal yet. Bring her along, Potch. Bring her along, and let's all have another squint at her. You can't get too much of a good thing."
"Right," Potch replied.
He went out of the hut to bring the opal from his own room.
"Reck'n it's the finest stone ever found on this field," Watty said, "and the biggest. How much did you say Potch had turned down for it, Michael?"
"Four hundred," Michael said.
"What are you hangin' on to her for, Michael?" Pony-Fence asked.
Michael shook his head, that faint smile of his flickering.
"Potch's had an idea he didn't want to part with her," he said. "But I daresay he'll be letting her go soon."
He did not say "now." But the men understood that. They guessed that Potch had been waiting for this moment; that he wanted to show Sophie the stone before selling it.
Potch came into the room again, his head back, an indefinable triumph and elation in his eyes as they sought Sophie's. He had a mustard tin, skinned of its gaudy paper covering, in his hand. A religious awe and emotion stirred the men as, standing beside Sophie, he put the tin on the table. They crowded about the table, muscles tightening in sun-red, weather-tanned faces, some of them as dark as the bronze of an old penny, the light in their eyes brightening, sharpening--a thirsting, eager expression in every face. Potch screwed off the lid of the tin, lifted the stone in its wrappings, and unrolled the dingy flannel which he had put round it. Then he took the opal from its bed of cotton wool.
Sophie leaned forward, her eyes shining, her breath coming quickly. The emotion in the room made itself felt through her.
"Put out the lamp, Michael, and let's have a candle," George said.
Michael turned out the lamp, struck a match and set it to the candle in a bottle on the dresser behind him. He put the candle on the table.
Potch held the great opal to the light, he moved it slowly behind the flame of the candle.
"Oh!"
Sophie's cry of quivering ecstasy thrilled her hearers. She was one of them; she had been brought up among them. They had known she would feel opal as they did. But that cry of hers heightened their enthusiasm.
The breaths of suppressed excitement and admiration, and their muttered exclamations went up:
"Now, she's showin'!"
"God, look at her now!"
Sophie followed every movement of the opal in Potch's hand. It was a world in itself, with its thousand thousand suns and stars, shimmering and changing before her eyes as they melted mysteriously in the jetty pool of the stone.
"Oh!" she breathed again, amazed, dazed, and rapturous.
Potch came closer to her. They stood together, adoring the orb of miraculous and mysterious beauty.
"Here," Potch said, "you hold her, Sophie."
Sophie put out her hand, trembling, filled with child-like awe and emotion. She stretched her fingers. The stone weighed heavy and cold on them. Then there was a thin, silvery sound like the shivering of glass.... Her hand was light and empty. She stood staring at it for a moment; her eyes went to Potch's face, aghast. The blood seemed to have left her body. She stood so with her hand out, her lips parted, her eyes wide....
After a while she knew Potch was holding her, and that he was saying:
"It's all right! It's all right, Sophie!"
She could feel him, something to lean against, beside her. Michael lifted the candle. With strange intensity, as though she were dreaming, Sophie saw the men had fallen away from the table. All their faces were caricatures, distorted and ghastly; and they were looking at the floor near her. Sophie's eyes went to the floor, too. She could see shattered stars--red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst--out across the earthen floor.
Michael put the candle on the floor. He and George Woods gathered them up. When Sophie looked up, the dark of the room swam with galaxies of those stars--red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst.
She stood staring before her: she had lost the power to move or to think. After a while she knew that the men had gone from the room, and that Potch was still beside her, his eyes on her face. He had eyes only for her face: he had barely glanced at the floor, where infinitesimal specks of coloured light were still winking in the dust. He took her hands. Sophie heard him talking, although she did not know what he was saying.
When she began to understand what Potch was saying, Sophie was sitting on the sofa under the window, and Potch was kneeling beside her. At first she heard him talking as if he were a long way away. She tried to listen; tried to understand what he was saying.
"It's all right, Sophie," Potch kept saying, his voice breaking.
Sight of her suffering overwhelmed him; and he trembled as he knelt beside her. Sophie heard him crying distantly:
"It's all right! It's all right, Sophie!"
She shuddered. Her eyes went to him, consciousness in their blank gaze.
Potch, realising that, murmured incoherently:
"Don't think of it any more.... It was yours, Sophie. It was for you I was keeping it.... Michael knew that, too. He knew that was why I didn't want to sell.... It was your opal ... to do what you liked with, really.
That was what I meant when I put it in your hand. But don't let us think of it any more. I don't want to think of it any more."
"Oh!" Sophie cried, in a bitter wailing; "it's true, I believe ...
somebody said once that I'm as unlucky as opal--that I bring people bad luck like opal...."
"You know what we say on the Ridge?" Potch said; "The only bad luck you get through opal is when you can't get enough of it--so the only bad luck you're likely to bring to people is when they can't get enough of you."
"Potch!"
Sophie's hands went to him in a flutter of breaking grief. The forgiveness she could not ask, the gratitude for his gentleness, which she could not express any other way, were in the gesture and exclamation.
On her hands, through his hot, clasped hands, the whole of Potch's being throbbed.
"Don't think of it any more," he begged.
"But it was your luck--your wonderful opal--and ... I broke it, Potch. I spoilt your luck."
"No," Potch said, borne away from himself on the flood of his desire to assuage her distress. "You make everything beautiful for me, Sophie.
Since you came back I haven't thought of the stone: I'd forgotten it....
This hasn't been the same place. I'm so filled up with happiness because you're here that I can't think of anything else."
Sophie looked into his face, her eyes swimming. She saw the deep passion of love in Potch's eyes; but she turned away from the light it poured over her, her face overcast again, bitterness and grief in it. She hung so for a moment; then her hands went over her face and she was crying abstractedly, wearily.
There was something in her aloofness in that moment which chilled Potch.