Her eyes widened. Her thought would not utter itself, but Michael knew it. Potch leaving the Ridge! The Ridge without Potch! It was impossible.
Their minds would not accept the idea.
Sophie turned away from the door. Her white dress fluttered in the moonlight. Michael could see it moving across the bare, shingly ground at the back of the hut. He thought that Sophie was going to look for Potch. He had not told her the direction in which Potch had gone. He wondered whether she would find him. She might know where to look for him. Michael wondered whether Potch haunted particular places as he himself did, when his soul was out of its depths in misery.
Instinctively Sophie went to the old playground she and Potch had made on the slope of the Ridge behind the Old Town.
She found him lying there, stretched across the shingly earth. He lay so still that she thought he might be asleep. Then she went to him and knelt beside him.
"Potch!" she said.
He moved as if to escape her touch. The desolation of spirit which had brought him to the earth like that overwhelmed Sophie. She crouched beside him.
"Potch," she cried. "Potch!"
Potch did not move or reply.
"I can't live ... if you won't forgive me, Potch," Sophie said.
He stirred. "Don't talk like that," he muttered.
After a little time he sat up and turned his face to her. The dim light of-the young moon showed it swollen and discoloured, a hideous and comic mask of the tragedy which consumed him.
"That's the sort of man I am," Potch said, his voice harsh and unsteady.
"I didn't know ... I didn't know I was like that. It came over me all of a sudden, when I saw you and--him. I didn't know any more until Michael was talking to me. I wouldn't've done it if I'd known, Sophie.... But I didn't know.... I just saw him--and you, and I had to put out the sight of it ... I had to get it out of my eyes... what I saw.... That's all I know. Michael says I didn't kill him ... but I meant to ... that's what I started to do."
Sophie's face withered under her distress.
"Don't say that, Potch," she begged.
"But I do," he said. "I must.... I can't make out ... how it was ... I felt like that. I thought I'd see things like you saw them always, stand by you. Now I don't know.... I'm not to be trusted----"
"I'd trust you always, and in anything, Potch," Sophie said.
"You can't say that--now."
"It's now ... I want to say it more than ever," she continued. "I can't explain ... what I did ... any more than you can what you did, Potch.
But I'm to blame for what you did ... and yet ... I can't see that I'm altogether to blame. I didn't want what happened--to happen ... any more than you."
She wanted to explain to Potch--to herself also. But she could not see clearly, or understand how the threads of her intentions and deeds had become so crossed and tangled. It was not easy to explain.
"You remember that ball at Warria I went to with father," she said at last. "I thought a lot of Arthur Henty then.... I thought I was in love with him. People teased me about him. They thought he was in love with me, too.... And then over there at the ball something happened that changed everything. I thought he was ashamed of me ... he didn't ask me to dance with him like he did at the Ridge balls.... He danced with other girls ... and nobody asked me to dance except Mr. Armitage, I wanted to go away from the Ridge and learn to look like those girls Arthur had danced with ... so that he would not be ashamed of me....
Afterwards I thought I'd forgotten and didn't care for him any more....
Last night he was not ashamed of me.... It was funny. I felt that the Warria people were envying me last night, and I had envied them at the other ball.... I didn't want to dance with Arthur ... but I did ... and, somehow, then--it was as if we had gone back to the time before the ball at Warria...."
A heavy, brooding silence hung between them. Sophie broke it.
"Michael says you're going away?"
"Yes," Potch replied.
Sophie shifted the pebbles on the earth about her abstractedly.
"Don't leave me, Potch," she cried, scattering the pebbles suddenly. "I don't know what will become of me if you go away.... I wanted us to get married and settle down."
Potch turned to her.
"You don't mean that?"
"I do," Sophie said, all her strength of will and spirit in the words.
"I'm afraid of myself, Potch ... afraid of drifting."
Potch's arms went round her. "Sophie!" he sobbed. But even as he held her he was conscious of something in her which did not fuse with him.
"But you love him!" he said.
Sophie's eyes did not fail from his.
"I do," she said, "but I don't want to. I wish I didn't."
His hands fell from her. "Why," he asked, "why do you say you'll marry me, if you ... if----"
Despair and desperation were in the restive movement of Sophie's hands.
"I'm afraid of him," she said, "of the power of my love for him ... and there's no future that way. With you there is a future. I can work with you and Michael for the Ridge.... You know I do care for you too, Potch dear, and I want to have the sort of life that keeps a woman faithful ... to mend your clothes, cook your meals, and----"
Potch quivered to the suggestions she had evoked. He saw Sophie in a thousand tender associations--their home, the quiet course their lives might have together. He loved her enough for both, he told himself.
His conscience was not clear that he should take this happiness the gods offered him, even for the moment. And yet--he could not turn from it.
Sophie had said she needed him; she wanted the home they would have together; all that their life in common would mean. And by and by--he stirred to the afterthought of her "and"--she wanted the children who might come to them.... Potch knew what Sophie meant when she said that she cared for him. Whatever else happened he knew he had her tenderest affection. She kissed him familiarly and with tenderness. It was not as Maud had kissed him, with passion, a soul-dying yearning. He drove the thought off. Maud was Maud, and Sophie Sophie; Maud's most passionate kisses had never distilled the magic for him that the slightest brush of Sophie's dress or fingers had.
Sophie took his hand.
"Potch," she said, "if you love me--if you want me to marry you, let us settle the thing this way.... I want to marry you.... I want to be your loving and faithful wife.... I'll try to be.... I don't want to think of anyone but you.... You may make me forget--if we are married, and get on well together. I hope you will----"
Potch took her into his arms, an inarticulate murmur breaking his voice.
CHAPTER XIII
Potch had looked towards Michael's hut before he went into his own, next evening. There was no light in its window, and he supposed that Michael had gone to bed. In the morning, as they were walking to the mine, Potch said:
"He's back; did you know?"
Michael guessed whom Potch was speaking of. "Saw him ... as I was walking out along the Warria road yesterday afternoon," he said; "and then at Newton's.... He looks ill."