"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.