"It's awfully good to have you, Potch," she murmured, glancing up at him.
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.
Armitage talked, amiably, easily, about nothing in particular, as they danced. Sophie enjoyed the harmonious rhythm and languor of their movement together. The black, misty folds of her gown drifted out and about them. It was delightful to be drifting idly to music like this with John, all their old differences, disagreements, and love-making forgotten, or leaving just a delicate aroma of subtle and intimate sympathy. The old admiration and affection were in John Armitage's eyes. It was like playing in the sunshine after a long winter, to be laughing and dancing under them again. And those stiff, disapproving faces by the wall spurred Sophie to further laughter--a reckless gaiety.
"You look like a butterfly just out of its chrysalis, and ... trying its wings in the sun, Sophie," Armitage said.
"I feel ... just like that," Sophie said.
After that Armitage had eyes for no one but her. He danced with two or three other people. Sophie saw him steering Martha through a set of quadrilles; but he hovered about her between the dances. She danced with George Woods and Watty, with the Moffats of Langi-Eumina, and some of the men from Darrawingee. Men of the station families were rather in awe of, and had a good deal of curiosity about this Fallen Star girl who had "gone the pace," in their vernacular, and of whose career in the gay world on the other side of the earth they had heard spicy gossip. Sophie guessed that had something to do with their fluttering about her. But she had learned to play inconsequently with the admiration of young men like these; she did so without thinking about it. Once or twice she caught Potch's gaze, perplexed and inquiring, fixed on her. She smiled to reassure him; but, unconsciously, she had drawn an eddy of the younger men in the room about her, and when she was not dancing she was talking with them, laughingly, fielding their crude witticisms, and enjoying the game as much as she had ever done.