'What decided you at last?' she said softly.
'I can scarce tell you,' he answered. 'I was busy studying the matter, arguing for and against; and then I saw of a sudden that I was lighting a lost battle; that my sense and reason and conscience were all gained over, and only my will held out. Then I gave up fighting any more.'
'You came up to the subject on a different side from what I did,'
Esther remarked.
'And you, Esther? have you been always as happy as you were when you wrote that letter?'
'Yes,' she said quietly. 'More happy.' But she did not look up.
'The happiness in your letter was the sunbeam that cleared up everything for me. Now I have talked enough; tell me of yourself and your father.'
'There is not much to tell,' said Esther, with that odd quietness. She felt somehow oppressed. 'We are living in the old fashion; have been living so all along.'
'But— Quite in the old fashion?' he said, with a swift glance at the little room where they were sitting. 'It does not look so, Esther.'
'This is not so pleasant a place as we were in when we first came to
New York,' Esther confessed. 'That was very pleasant.'
'Why did you change?'