Arthur had given her his arm before the open door; they had moved a little distance from the door. Darkness was about them. There was no hesitancy, no moment of consideration. As two waves meeting in mid-ocean fall to each other, they met, and were lost in the oblivion of a close embrace. The first violence of their movement, failing, brought consciousness of time and place. They were standing in the slight shadow of some trees just beyond the light of the hall. A purring of music came to them in far-away murmurs, and strange, distant ejaculations, and laughter.
Sophie tried to withdraw from the arms which held her.
"No, no," she breathed; but Henty drew her to him again.
He murmured into her hair, and then from her lips again took a full draught of her being, lingeringly, as though he would drain its last essence.
A shadow loomed heavy and shapeless over them. It fell on them. Sophie was thrown back. Dazed, and as if she were falling through space, for a moment she did not realise what had happened. Then, there in the dark, she knew men were grappling silently. The intensity of the struggle paralysed her; she could see nothing but heavy, rolling shapes; hear nothing but stertorous breathing and the snorting grunts as of enraged animals. A cry, as if someone were hurt, broke the fear which had stupefied her.
Two or three men came running from the hall. The struggling figures were on their feet again; they swung from the shadow. Sophie had an instant's vision of a hideous, distorted face she scarcely recognised as Potch's ... she saw Henty on the ground and Potch crouched over him. Then the surrounding darkness swallowed her. She knew she was dragged away from where she had been standing; she seemed to have been dragged through darkness for hours. When she wakened she could see only those heavy, quiet figures, struggling and grappling through the darkness.
Sophie went into the shed where her cutting-wheel was soon after eight o'clock next morning. She took up a packet of small stones George Woods had left with her and set to work on them.
The wheel was in a line with the window, and she sat on the wooden chair before it, so that the light fell over her left shoulder. On the bench which ran out from the wheel were a spirit lamp and the trays of rough opal; on the other side of the bench the polishing buffers were arranged one against the other. A hand-basin, the water in it raddled with rouge, stood on the table behind her, and a white china jug of fresh water beside it.