'Mr. Pitt,' she said frankly to him one day, when the talk had been eager in the same line it had taken that first day on the verandah, and both parties had held the same respective positions with regard to each other,—'Mr. Pitt, are you fighting me, or yourself?'
He paused and looked at her, and half laughed.
'You are right,' said he. And then he went off, and for the present that was all Miss Betty gained by her motion.
Nobody saw much of Pitt during the rest of the day. The next morning, after breakfast, he came out to the two ladies where as usual they were sitting at work. It was another September day of sultry heat, yet the verandah was also in the morning a pleasant place, sweet with the honeysuckle fragrance still lingering, and traversed by a faint intermittent breeze. Both ladies raised their heads to look at the young man as he came towards them, and then, struck by something in his face, could not take their eyes away. He came straight to his mother and stood there in front of her, looking down and meeting her look; Miss Frere could not see how, but evidently it troubled Mrs. Dallas.
'What is it now, Pitt?' she asked.
'I have come to tell you, mother. I have come to tell you that I have given up fighting.'
'Fighting!?'
'Yes. The battle is won, and I have lost, and gained. I have given up fighting, mother, and I am Christ's free man.'
'What?' exclaimed Mrs. Dallas bewilderedly.
'It is true, mother. I am Christ's servant. The things are the same. How should I not be the servant, the bond-servant, of Him who has made a free man of me?'