Sophie's cry of quivering ecstasy thrilled her hearers. She was one of them; she had been brought up among them. They had known she would feel opal as they did. But that cry of hers heightened their enthusiasm.
The breaths of suppressed excitement and admiration, and their muttered exclamations went up:
Sophie followed every movement of the opal in Potch's hand. It was a world in itself, with its thousand thousand suns and stars, shimmering and changing before her eyes as they melted mysteriously in the jetty pool of the stone.
"Oh!" she breathed again, amazed, dazed, and rapturous.
Potch came closer to her. They stood together, adoring the orb of miraculous and mysterious beauty.
"Here," Potch said, "you hold her, Sophie."
Sophie put out her hand, trembling, filled with child-like awe and emotion. She stretched her fingers. The stone weighed heavy and cold on them. Then there was a thin, silvery sound like the shivering of glass.... Her hand was light and empty. She stood staring at it for a moment; her eyes went to Potch's face, aghast. The blood seemed to have left her body. She stood so with her hand out, her lips parted, her eyes wide....
After a while she knew Potch was holding her, and that he was saying:
"It's all right! It's all right, Sophie!"
She could feel him, something to lean against, beside her. Michael lifted the candle. With strange intensity, as though she were dreaming, Sophie saw the men had fallen away from the table. All their faces were caricatures, distorted and ghastly; and they were looking at the floor near her. Sophie's eyes went to the floor, too. She could see shattered stars--red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst--out across the earthen floor.
Michael put the candle on the floor. He and George Woods gathered them up. When Sophie looked up, the dark of the room swam with galaxies of those stars--red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst.
She stood staring before her: she had lost the power to move or to think. After a while she knew that the men had gone from the room, and that Potch was still beside her, his eyes on her face. He had eyes only for her face: he had barely glanced at the floor, where infinitesimal specks of coloured light were still winking in the dust. He took her hands. Sophie heard him talking, although she did not know what he was saying.