"You remember that ball at Warria I went to with father," she said at last. "I thought a lot of Arthur Henty then.... I thought I was in love with him. People teased me about him. They thought he was in love with me, too.... And then over there at the ball something happened that changed everything. I thought he was ashamed of me ... he didn't ask me to dance with him like he did at the Ridge balls.... He danced with other girls ... and nobody asked me to dance except Mr. Armitage, I wanted to go away from the Ridge and learn to look like those girls Arthur had danced with ... so that he would not be ashamed of me.... Afterwards I thought I'd forgotten and didn't care for him any more.... Last night he was not ashamed of me.... It was funny. I felt that the Warria people were envying me last night, and I had envied them at the other ball.... I didn't want to dance with Arthur ... but I did ... and, somehow, then—it was as if we had gone back to the time before the ball at Warria...."
A heavy, brooding silence hung between them. Sophie broke it.
"Michael says you're going away?"
"Yes," Potch replied.
Sophie shifted the pebbles on the earth about her abstractedly.
"Don't leave me, Potch," she cried, scattering the pebbles suddenly. "I don't know what will become of me if you go away.... I wanted us to get married and settle down."
Potch turned to her.
"You don't mean that?"
"I do," Sophie said, all her strength of will and spirit in the words. "I'm afraid of myself, Potch ... afraid of drifting."
Potch's arms went round her. "Sophie!" he sobbed. But even as he held her he was conscious of something in her which did not fuse with him.