"What's to be done about it?" he asked at last.
"I don't know. Sophie'll go through with her part, I suppose ... as her mother did."
"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...."
"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."
"Curse him," Michael groaned. "I wish he'd kept out of our lives."
Potch came in. He looked from Martha to Michael.
"She ... went out for a walk, a while ago," Martha said.
At first Martha believed Potch knew what had happened. In his eyes there was an awe and horror which communicated itself to Martha and Michael, and held them dumb.
"Henty has shot himself down in the tank paddock," he said at length.
Martha uttered a low wail. Michael looked at Potch, waiting to hear further.
"Some of the boys going home to the Three Mile heard the shot, and went over," Potch said. "I wanted to tell Sophie myself.... They were looking for you in the town, Martha."
"Oh!" Martha got up and went to the door.
"He's at Newton's," Potch said. "Which way did Sophie go?"
"She went towards the Old Town, Potch," Martha said.
The chestnut Arthur Henty had brought for Sophie, still standing with reins over a post of the goat-pen, whinnied when he saw them at the door of the hut. Potch looked at him as if he were wondering why the horse was there--a vague perplexity defined itself through the troubled abstraction of his gaze. His eyes went to Martha as if asking her how the horse came to be there; but she did not offer any explanation. She went off down the track to Newton's, and he struck out towards the Old Town.