Michael told her about the ratting, and how Paul had had sun-stroke, but that he was all right again now; and how Potch and he were thinking of putting him on to work again. Then he said that he must get along down to the claims, as Potch would be wondering what had become of him; and Paul might be down there, having heard of the colours they had got the night before.
"I'll send him up to you, if he's there," Michael said. "But you'd better just lie still now, and try to get a little of the shut-eye you've been missing these last two or three days."
"Months, Michael," Sophie said, that dark, strange look coming into her eyes again.
They did not speak for a moment. Then she lay back on the bed.
"But I'll sleep all right here," she said. "I feel as if I'd sleep for years and years.... It's the smell of the paper daisies and the sandal-wood smoke, I suppose. The air's got such a nice taste, Michael.... It smells like peace, I think."
"Well," Michael said, "you eat as much of it as you fancy. I don't mind if Paul doesn't find you till he comes back to tea.... It'd do you more good to have a sleep now, and then you'll be feelin' a bit fitter."
"I think I could go to sleep now, Michael," Sophie murmured.
Michael stood watching her for a moment as she seemed to go to sleep, thinking that the dry, northern air, with its drowsy fragrance, was already beginning to draw the ache from her body and brain. He went to the curtain of the doorway, dropped it, and turned out into the blank sunshine of the day again.
He fit his pipe and smoked abstractedly as he walked down the track to the mine. He had already made up his mind that it would be better for Sophie to sleep for a while, and that he was not going to get anyone to look for Paul and send him to her.
She had said nothing of the reason for her return, and Michael knew there must be a reason. He could not reconcile the Sophie Dawe Armitage had described as taking her life in America with such joyous zest, and the elegant young woman on the show-page of the illustrated magazine, with the weary and broken-looking girl he had been talking to. Whatever it was that had changed her outlook, had been like an earthquake, devastating all before it, Michael imagined. It had left her with no more than the instinct to go to those who loved and would shelter her.