Her-mother's eyes had rested on Michael's face. She had smiled at him. Sophie did not think she had ever seen her smile like that before, although her smile had always been like a light on her face.
"Don't let him take her away," her mother had said after a moment. "I want her to grow up in this place ... in the quiet ... never to know the treacherous ... whirlpool ... of life beyond the Ridge."
Then her mother had seen and called to her.
Sophie glanced back at the slowly-moving train of vehicles. They had a dreary, dream-like aspect. She felt as if she were moving in a dream. Everything she saw, and heard, and did, was invested with unreality; she had a vague, unfeeling curiosity about everything.
"You see, Michael," her father was saying when she heard him talking again, "we'd just got out that big bit when Potch came and said that Marya ... that Marya.... I couldn't believe it was true ... and there was the opal! And when I got home in the evening she was gone. My poor Marya! And I'd brought some of the stones to show her."
He broke down and wept. "Do you think she knows about the opal, Michael?"
Michael did not reply. Sophie looked up at him. The pain of his face, a sudden passionate grieving that wrung it, translated to her what this dying of her mother meant. She huddled against Michael; in all her trouble and bewilderment there seemed nothing to do but to keep close to Michael.
And so they came to the gate of a fenced plot which was like a quiet garden on the plains. Several young coolebahs, and two or three older trees standing in it, scattered light shade; and a few head-stones and wooden crosses, painted white or bleached by the weather, showed above the waving grass and wild flowers.
Sophie held the reins when Michael got down to open the gate. Then he took his seat again and they drove in through the gateway. Other people tied their horses and buggies to the fence outside.
When all the people who had been driving, riding, or walking on the road went towards an old coolebah under which the earth had been thrown up and a grave had been dug, Michael told Sophie to go with her father and stand beside them. She did so, and dull, grieving eyes were turned to her; glances of pitiful sympathy. But Snow-Shoes came towards the little crowd beside the tree, singing.