"How did you happen to come to Gila?" he asked. "I met Mr. and Mrs. Clayton in the home of one of their friends in England. We were house guests there at the same time. We returned to America on the same steamer. Mrs. Clayton knew I was to do settlement work, and urged me to come to Gila a while instead. So I came." How much her coming was beginning to mean to him, to others! Both were silent a while. Then it was Kenneth who spoke. "Do you know, Miss Bright, it never occurred to me before you came, that I had any obligations to these people? Now I know I have. I was indifferent to the fact that I had a soul myself until you came." She looked up questioningly. "Yes, I mean it," he said. "To all intents and purposes I had no soul. A man forgets he has a soul when he lives in the midst of vice, and no one cares whether he goes to the devil or not." "Is it the environment, or the feeling that no one cares?" she asked. "Both." He buried his face in his hands. "Did you feel that no one cared? I'm sure your mother cared." She had touched a sore spot. "My mother?" he said, bitterly. "My mother is a woman of the world." Here he lifted his head. "She is engrossed in society. She has no interest whatever in me, and never did have, although I am her only child." "Perhaps you are mistaken," she said softly. "I am sure you must be mistaken." "When a mother lets year after year go by without writing to her son, do you think she cares?" "You don't mean to say that you never receive a letter from your mother?" "My mother has not written to me since I came to America. Suppose your mother did not write to you. Would you think she had a very deep affection for you?" Esther's face grew wistful. "Perhaps you do not know," she answered, "I have no living mother. She died when I was born." "Forgive my thoughtless question," he said. "I did not know you had lost your mother. I was selfish." "Oh, no," she said, "not selfish. You didn't know, that was all. We sometimes make mistakes, all of us, when we do not know. I lost my father when I was a very little child." "And your grandfather reared you?" "Yes, grandfather, assisted by my uncle and auntie." "Tell me about your grandfather, I like to hear." "He was my first playfellow, and a fine one he was, too." "How I envy him!" "You mustn't interrupt me," she said demurely. "I am penitent. Do proceed." Then she told him, in brief, the story of her life, simple and sweet in the telling. She told him of the work done by her grandfather. "He preaches, you tell me." "Yes," she said, rambling on, "he is a graduate of Yale, and prepared to be a physician. But his heart drew him into the ministry, the place where he felt the Great Physician would have him be. Grandfather is a Friend, you know, a Quaker." "So I understood."