d,
and tower over other men; and I liked all the delights of life as well
as other people do, and was unwilling to give up a life of
self-indulgence, which I had means to gratify. Esther, I fought hard! I
fought for years--can you believe it?--before I could make up my mind.'

'And now?' she said, looking at him.

'Now? Now,' said he, lowering his voice a little,--'now I have come to
know the truth of what you told me; I have learned to know Christ; and
I know, as you know, that all things that may be desired are not to be
compared with that knowledge. I understand what Paul meant when he said
he had suffered the loss of all things for it and counted them less
than nothing. So do I; so would I; so have I, as far as the giving up
of myself and them to their right owner goes. _That_ is done.'

Esther was very glad; she knew she ought to be very glad, and she was;
and yet, gladness was not precisely the uppermost feeling that
possessed her. She did not know what in the world could make her think
of tears at that moment; but there was a strange sensation as if, had
she been alone, she would have liked to cry. No shadow of such a
softness appeared, however.

'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?'

'It was necessary,' she said, with a smile. 'You may as well know it;
papa lost money.'

'How?'

'He in