"It's not true," Sophie cried, her faith afire. "It couldn't be! ... If everybody in the world told me, I wouldn't believe it!"
Armitage took a cigarette-case from his vest pocket, opened it, and selected a cigarette.
"I'm not asking you to believe me," he said. "I'm only explaining the position to you because you're concerned in it. And for God's sake don't let us be melodramatic about it, Sophie. I'm not a villain. I don't feel in the least like one. This is entirely a business affair.... I see my way to a profitable investment--incidentally fulfilment of a scheme I've been working out for a good many years.
"Michael would oppose the syndicate for all he's worth if it weren't for this trump card of mine," Armitage went on. "He's got a Utopian dream about the place.... I see it as an up-to-date mining town, with all the advantages which science and money can bring to the development of its resources. His dream against mine--that's what it amounts to.... Well, it's a fair thing, isn't it, if I know that Michael is false to the things he says he stands for--and he stands in the way of my scheme--to let the men know he's false? ... They will fall away from the ideas he stands for as they will from Michael; two or three may take the ideas sans Michael ... but they will be in the minority.... The way will be clear for reorganisation then."
Not for an instant did Sophie believe that Michael had been a traitor to his own creed--false to the things he stood for, as John Armitage said,--although she thought he may have done something to give Armitage reason for thinking so.
"I'll see Michael to-morrow, and have it out with him," John Armitage said. "I shall tell him what I know ... and also my plans. If he will work with me----"
"If he will work with me," Armitage repeated, knowing she realised all that would mean in the way of surrender for Michael, "nothing need be said which will undermine Michael's influence with men of the Ridge. I know he can make things a great deal easier by using his influence with them--by bending their thoughts in the direction of my proposition, suggesting that, after all, they have given their system a trial and it has not worked out as satisfactorily as might have been expected.... I'll make all the concessions possible, you may be sure--give it a profit-sharing basis even, so that the transaction won't look like the thing they are prejudiced against. But if Michael refuses...."