"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. His instincts, sensitive as the antennæ of an insect, wavered over her, trying to discover the cause of it. Conscious of a mood which excluded him, he withdrew his hand from her. Sophie groped for it. Then the sense of sex and of barriers swept from him, by the passion of his desire to comfort and console her. Potch put his arm round her and drew Sophie to him, murmuring With an utter tenderness, "Sophie! Sophie!"
Later she said:
"I can't tell you ... what happened ... out there, Potch. Not yet ... not now.... Perhaps some day I will. It hurt so much that it took all the singing out of me. My heart wouldn't move ... so my voice died. I thought if I came home, you and Michael wouldn't mind ... my being like I am. But you've all been so good to me, Potch ... and it's so restful here, I was beginning to think that life might go on from where I left it; that it might be just a quiet living together and loving, like it was before...."
"It can, Sophie!" Potch said, his eyes on her face, wistful and eager to read her thought.
"But look what I've done," she said.
Potch lifted her hand to his lips, a resurge of the virile male in him moving his restraint.
"I've told you," he said, "what you've done. You've put joy into all our hearts—just to see you again. Michael's told you that, too, and George and the rest of them."
"Yes, but, Potch ..." Sophie paused, and he saw the shadow of dark thoughts in her eyes again. "I'm not what you think I am. I'm not like any of you think."