.'

'Then,' said Esther softly, 'as far as _that_ goes, Pitt, it seems to
me an argument for living in London.'

He met her eyes with an earnest warm look, of somewhat wistful
recognition, intense with his own feeling of the subject, glad in her
sympathy, and yet tenderly cognizant of the way the subject would
affect her.

'There is one point, among many, on which you and Miss Frere differ,'
he said, however, coolly, going back to his drawing.

'She does not like, or would not like, living in London?'

'I beg your pardon! but she would object to your reason for living
there.'

Esther was silent; her recollection of Betty quite agreed with this
observation.

'You say you have seen her?' Pitt went on presently.

'Yes.'

'And talked with her?'

'Oh yes. And liked her too, in a way.'

'Did she know your name!' he asked suddenly, facing round.

'Why, certainly,' said Esther, smiling. 'We were properly introduced;
and we talked for a long while, and very earnestly. She interested me.'

Pitt's brows drew together ominously. Poor Betty! The old Spanish
proverb would have held good in her case; 'If you do not want a thing
known of you, _don't do it_.' Pitt's pencil went on furiously fast, and
Esther sat by, wondering what he was thinking of. But soon his brow
cleared again as his drawing was done, and he flung down the pencil and
turned to her.

'Esther,' he said, 'it is dawning on me, like a glory out of the sky,
that you and I are not merely to live our earthly life together, and
serve together, in London or anywhere, in the work given us to do. That
is only the small beginning. Beyond all that stretches an endless life
and ages of better service, in which we shall still be together and
love and live with each other. In the light of such a distant glory, is
it much, if we in this little life on earth give all we have to Him who
has bought all that, and all this too, for us?'

'It is not much,' said Esther, with a sudden veil of moisture coming
over her eyes, through which they shone like two stars. Pitt took both
her hands.

'I mean it literally,' he said.

'So do I.'

'We will be only stewards, using faithfully everything, and doing
everything, so as it seems would be most for His honour and best for
His work.'

'Yes,' said Esther. But gladness was like to choke her from speaking at
all.

'In India there is not the poorest Hindoo but puts by from his every
meal of rice so much as a spoonful for hi