Michael's gesture implied it was useless to talk of that.
Sophie continued: "But you know what I said, Michael. I can't be happy until it has been arranged. I owe it to him to put things right with the men here.... You must do that for me, Michael. They know I'm going to marry Potch ... and if they see there's no ill feeling between John Armitage and me, they'll believe I was more to blame than he was--if it's a question of blame.... I want you and Potch to stand by me in this, Michael."
Potch's eyes turned to her. She read their assurance, deep, still, and sure. But Michael showed no relenting.
Armitage left his place by the door and came towards them. All eyes in the room were on him. A whisper of surprise and something like fear had circled. He was as aware of it, and of the situation his coming had created, as anyone in the hall; but he appeared unconscious and indifferent, and as if there were no particular significance to attach to his being at the ball and crossing to speak to Sophie.
She met him with the same indifference and smiling detachment. They had met so often before people like this, that it was not much more for them than playing a game they had learned to play rather well.
Sophie said: "It is you really?"
He took the hand she held to him. "But you knew I was coming? You had my letter?"
"Of course ... but----"
"And my word is my bond."
The cynical, whimsical inflection of John Armitage's voice, and the perfectly easy and friendly terms Sophie and he were on, surprised people who were near them.
Michael was incensed by it; but Potch, standing beside Sophie, regarded Armitage with grave, quiet eyes.
"Good evening, Michael! Evening, Potch!" Armitage said.
Michael did not reply; but Potch said:
"Evening, Mr. Armitage!" And Sophie covered the trail of his words, and Michael's silence, with questions as to the sort of journey Armitage had made; a flying commentary on the ball, the races, and the weather.
Michael moved away as the next dance was beginning.
"Is this my dance, Sophie?" Armitage inquired.
Sophie shook her head, smiling.
"No," she said.
"Which is my dance?" The challenge had yielded to a note of appeal.
Sophie met that appeal with a smile, baffling, but of kindly understanding.
"The next one."
She danced with Potch, appreciating his quiet strength, the reserve force she felt in him, the sense that this man was hers to lean on, hold to, or move as she wished.
"It's awfully good to have you, Potch," she murmured, glancing up at him.
"Sophie!"
His declarations were always just that murmuring of her name with a love and gratitude beyond words.
While she was dancing with Potch, Sophie saw Armitage go to the Hentys; he stood talking with them, and then danced the last bars of the waltz with Polly Henty.
When she was dancing with Armitage, Sophie discovered Arthur Henty leaning against the wall near the door, looking over the dancers with an odd, glowering expression. He had been drinking heavily of late, she had heard. Sophie wondered whether he was watching her, and whether he was connecting this night with that night at Warria, which had brought about all there had been between herself and John Armitage--even this dancing with him at a Ridge ball, after they had been lovers, and were no longer anything but very good friends. She knew people were following her dancing with John Armitage with interest. Some of them were scandalised that he should have come to the Ridge, and that they should be meeting on such friendly terms. She could see the Warria party watching her dancing with John Armitage, Mrs. Arthur Henty looking like a pastel drawing against the wall, and Polly, her pleasant face and plump figure blurred against the grey background of the corrugated iron wall.
Armitage talked, amiably, easily, about nothing in particular, as they danced. Sophie enjoyed the harmonious rhythm and languor of their movement together. The black, misty folds of her gown drifted out and about them. It was delightful to be drifting idly to music like this with John, all their old differences, disagreements, and love-making forgotten, or leaving just a delicate aroma of subtle and intimate sympathy. The old admiration and affection were in John Armitage's eyes.
It was like playing in the sunshine after a long winter, to be laughing and dancing under them again. And those stiff, disapproving faces by the wall spurred Sophie to further laughter--a reckless gaiety.
"You look like a butterfly just out of its chrysalis, and ... trying its wings in the sun, Sophie," Armitage said.
"I feel ... just like that," Sophie said.
After that Armitage had eyes for no one but her. He danced with two or three other people. Sophie saw him steering Martha through a set of quadrilles; but he hovered about her between the dances. She danced with George Woods and Watty, with the Moffats of Langi-Eumina, and some of the men from Darrawingee. Men of the station families were rather in awe of, and had a good deal of curiosity about this Fallen Star girl who had "gone the pace," in their vernacular, and of whose career in the gay world on the other side of the earth they had heard spicy gossip. Sophie guessed that had something to do with their fluttering about her. But she had learned to play inconsequently with the admiration of young men like these; she did so without thinking about it. Once or twice she caught Potch's gaze, perplexed and inquiring, fixed on her. She smiled to reassure him; but, unconsciously, she had drawn an eddy of the younger men in the room about her, and when she was not dancing she was talking with them, laughingly, fielding their crude witticisms, and enjoying the game as much as she had ever done.
As she was coming from a dance with Roy O'Mara she passed Arthur Henty where he stood by the door. The reek of whisky about him assailed Sophie as she passed. She glanced up at him. His eyes were on her. He swung over to her where she had gone to sit beside Martha M'Cready.
"You're going to dance with me?" he asked, a husky uncertainty in his voice.
"No," Sophie said, looking away from him.
"Yes."
The low growl, savage and insistent, brought her eyes to his. Dark and sunbright, they were, but with pain and hunger in their depths. The unspoken truth between them, the truth which their wills had thwarted, spoke through their eyes. It would not be denied.
"There's going to be an extra after supper," he said.
"Very well."
What happened then was remote from her. Sophie did not remember what she had said or done, until she was dancing with Arthur Henty.
How long was it since that night at Warria? Was she waiting for him as she had waited then? But there were all those long years between.
Memories brilliant and tempestuous flickered before her. Then she was dancing with Arthur.
He had come to her quite ordinarily; they had walked down the room a few paces; then he had taken her hand in his, and they had swung out among the dancers. He did not seem drunk now. Sophie wondered at his steadier poise as she moved away with him. The butterfly joy of fluttering in sunshine was leaving her, she knew, as she went with him. She made an effort to recapture it. Looking up at him, she tried to talk lightly, indifferently, and to laugh, but it was no good. Arthur did not bother to reply to anything she said; he rested his eyes in hers, possessing himself of her behind her gaze. Sophie's laughter failed. The inalienable, unalterable attraction of each to the other which they had read long before in each other's eyes was still there, after all the years and the dark and troubled times they had been through.
Sophie wondered whether Arthur was thinking of those times when they had walked together on the Ridge tracks. She wondered whether he was remembering little things he had said ... she had said ... the afternoon he had recited:
"I met a lady in the meads Full beautiful, a fairy's child; Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild."
Sophie wished she had not begun to think back. She wished she had not danced with Arthur. People looking after her wondered why she was not laughing; why suddenly her good spirits had died down. She was tired and wanted to cry.... She hoped she would not cry; but she did not like dancing with Arthur Henty before all these people. It was like dancing on a grave.
Henty's grip tightened. Sophie's face had become childish and pitiful, working with the distress which she could not suppress. His hand on hers comforted her. Their hands loved and clung; they comforted each other, every fibre finding its mate, twined and entwined; all the little nests of nerves were throbbing and crooning to each other.
Were they dancing, or drifting through space as they would drift when they were dead, as perhaps they had drifted through time? Sophie wondered. The noises of the ball-room broke in on her wondering--voices, shouting, and laughter; the little cries of girls and the heavy exclamations of men, the music enwrapping them....
Sophie longed for the deep, straight glance of his eyes; yet she dared not look up. Arthur's will, working against hers, demanded the surrender. Through all her body, imperiously, his demand communicated itself. Her gaze went to him, and flew off again.
As they danced, Arthur seemed to be taking her into deep water. She was afraid of getting out of her depth ... but he held her carefully. His grasp, was strong and his eyes hungry. Sophie could not escape that hungry look of his eyes. She told herself that she would not look up; she would not see it. They moved unsteadily; his breath, hot and smelling of whisky, fanned her. She sickened under it, loathing the smell of whisky and the rank tobacco he had been smoking. His grasp tightened. She was afraid of him--afraid of all the long, old dreams he might revive. Her step faltered, his arm trembled against her. And those hungry, hungry eyes.... She could not see them; she would not.
A clamour of tiny voices rose within her and dinned in her ears. She could hear the clamour of tiny voices going on in Henty, too; his voices were drowning her voices. She looked up to him begging him to silence them ... begging, but unable to beg, terrified and quailing to the implacable in him--the stark passion and tragedy which were in his face.
She was helpless before them.