"It's too much," Michael muttered.
He sat with his head buried in his hands.
"What's to be done about it?" he asked at last.
Martha shook her head.
"I don't know. Sophie'll go through with her part, I suppose ... as her mother did."
Michael's face quivered.
"He's such an outsider," he groaned. "Sophie'd never give up the things we stand for here, now she understands them."
"That's just it," Martha said. "She doesn't want to—but there's something stronger than herself draggin' at her ... it's something that's been in all the women she's come of—the feeling a woman's got for the man who's her mate. Sophie married Potch, it's my belief, to get away from this man. She wanted to chain herself to us and her life here. She wants to stay with us.... She was kept up at first by ideas of duty and sacrifice, and serving something more than her own happiness. But love's like murder, Michael—it must out, and it's a good thing it must...."
"And what about Potch?" Michael asked.
"Potch?" Martha smiled. "The dear lad ... he'll stand up to things. There are people like that—and there're people like Arthur Henty who can't stand up to things. It's not their fault they're made that way ... and they go under when they have too much to bear."