'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.'