"Sophie! Sophie!"
He wandered for hours before he went back to the hut, and saw Michael coming out to meet him.
"She knows, Potch," Michael said.
Potch waited for him to continue.
"Says nobody told her.... She heard the shot ... and knew," Michael said.
Potch exclaimed brokenly. He asked how Sophie was. Michael said she had come in and had lain down on the sofa as though she were very tired. She had been lying there ever since, so still that Michael was alarmed. He had called Paul and sent him to find Martha. Sophie had not cried at all, Michael said.
She was lying on the sofa under the window, her hair thrown back from her face when Potch went into the hut. He closed his eyes against the sight of her face; he could not see Sophie in the grip of such pain. He knelt beside her.
"Sophie! Sophie!" he murmured, the inarticulate prayer of his love and anguish in those words.