"But decidedly English," he retorted. "I wish you would tell me your story." Her face flushed. "I beg your pardon," he hastened to say. "I did not mean to be rude. You interest me deeply. Anything you think or do, anything that has made you what you are, is of deep interest to me." "There is nothing to tell," she said simply. "Just a few pages, with here and there an entry; a few birthdays; graduation from college; foreign travel; work in Gila; a life spent in companionship with a wonderfully lovely and lovable grandfather; work at his side, and life's history in the making. That is all." "All?" he repeated. "But that is rich in suggestion. I have studied you almost exclusively for three weeks, and I know you." She looked up. The expression in his eyes nettled her. Her spinal column stiffened. "Indeed! Know a woman in three weeks! You do well, better than most of your sex. Most men, I am told, find woman an unsolvable problem, and when they think they know her, they find they don't." This was interesting to him. He liked the flash in her eye. "Some life purpose brings you to Gila, to work so unselfishly for a lot of common, ignorant people." "What is that to you?" Her question sounded harsh in her own ears, and then she begged his pardon. "No apology is necessary on your part," he said, changing from banter to a tone of seriousness. "My words roused your resentment. I am at fault. The coming of a delicately nurtured girl like you into such a place of degradation is like the coming of an angel of light down to the bottomless pit. I beg forgiveness for saying this; but, Miss Bright, a mining camp, in these days, is a hotbed of vice." "All the more reason why people of intelligence and character should try to make the life here clean. I believe we can crowd out evil by cultivating the good." "You are a decided optimist," he said; "and I, by force of circumstances, have become a confirmed pessimist." "You will not continue to be a pessimist," she said, prophetically, seeing in her mind's eye what he would be in the years to come. "You will come to know deep human sympathy; you will believe in the possibility of better and better things for your fellows. You will use your strength, your intellect, your fine education, for the best service of the world about you." Somehow that prophecy went home to him. "By George!" he exclaimed, "you make a fellow feel he _must_ be just what you want him to be, and what he ought to be." The man studied the woman before him, with deep and increasing interest. She possessed a strength, he was sure, of which no one in Gila had yet dreamed. He continued: "Would you mind telling me the humanitarian notions that made you willing to bury yourself in this godless place?" She hesitated. The catechism evidently annoyed her, for it seemed to savor of impertinent curiosity. But at last she answered: "I believe my grandfather is responsible for the humanitarian notions. It is a long story." She hesitated.