The days were blessed and peaceful to Sophie, too; but she, also, was afraid that something might happen to disturb them. She wanted to marry Potch in order to secure them, and to live and work with him on the Ridge. She wanted to live the life of any other woman on the Ridge with her mate. Life looked so straight and simple that way. She could see it stretching before her into the years. Her hands would be full of real things. She would be living a life of service and usefulness, in accordance with the ideal the Ridge had set itself, and which Michael had preached with the zeal of a latter-day saint. She believed her life would shape itself to this future; but sometimes a wraith in the back-country of her mind rose shrieking: "Never! Never!"
It threw her into the outer darkness of despair, that cry, but she had learned to exorcise its influence by going to Potch and lifting her lips for him to kiss.
"What is it?" he asked one day, vaguely aware of the meaning of the movement.
Before the reverence and worship of his eyes the wraith fled. Sophie took his face between her hands.
"Oh, my dear," she murmured, her eyes straining on his face, "I do love you ... and I will love you, more and more."
"You don't have to worry about that," Potch said. "I love you enough for both of us.... Just think of me"—he lifted her hand and kissed the back of it gently—"like this—your hand—a sort of third hand."
When he came back from the mine in the afternoon Potch went to see Sophie, cut wood for her, and do any odd jobs she might need done. Sometimes he had tea with her, and they read the reviews and books Michael passed on to them. In the evening they went for a walk, usually towards the Old Town, and sat on a long slope of the Ridge overlooking the Rouminofs' first home—near where they had played when they were children, and had watched the goats feeding on green patches between the dumps.
They had awed talks there; and now and then the darkness, shutting off sight of each other, had made something like disembodied spirits of them, and their spirits communicated dumbly as well as on the frail wind of their voices.
They yarned and gossiped sometimes, too, about the things that had happened, and what Potch had done while Sophie was away. She asked a good deal about the ratting, and about Jun and Maud. Potch tried to avoid talking of it and of them. He had evaded her questions, and Sophie returned to them, perplexed by his reticence.
"I don't understand, Potch," she said on one occasion. "You found out that Maud and Jun had something to do with the ratting, and you went over to Jun's ... and told them you were going to tell the boys.... They must have known you would tell. Maud——"