"No," she said.
"Which is my dance?" The challenge had yielded to a note of appeal.
Sophie met that appeal with a smile, baffling, but of kindly understanding.
"The next one."
She danced with Potch, appreciating his quiet strength, the reserve force she felt in him, the sense that this man was hers to lean on, hold to, or move as she wished.
"It's awfully good to have you, Potch," she murmured, glancing up at him.
"Sophie!"
His declarations were always just that murmuring of her name with a love and gratitude beyond words.
While she was dancing with Potch, Sophie saw Armitage go to the Hentys; he stood talking with them, and then danced the last bars of the waltz with Polly Henty.
When she was dancing with Armitage, Sophie discovered Arthur Henty leaning against the wall near the door, looking over the dancers with an odd, glowering expression. He had been drinking heavily of late, she had heard. Sophie wondered whether he was watching her, and whether he was connecting this night with that night at Warria, which had brought about all there had been between herself and John Armitage—even this dancing with him at a Ridge ball, after they had been lovers, and were no longer anything but very good friends. She knew people were following her dancing with John Armitage with interest. Some of them were scandalised that he should have come to the Ridge, and that they should be meeting on such friendly terms. She could see the Warria party watching her dancing with John Armitage, Mrs. Arthur Henty looking like a pastel drawing against the wall, and Polly, her pleasant face and plump figure blurred against the grey background of the corrugated iron wall.