"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.