It took him many a day to realize the inevitableness of his present environment, and when at last he looked it in the face, it bewildered him. He was married to a woman as severely practical in her ideas, and systematic in her life, as he was visionary and erratic. She was stronger than he, both in nature and character, and the habit of yielding to her had now become the absolute rule of his life. Very shortly after their marriage she had found his music an inconvenience, and although she had made no outward objection to the arrival of the grand piano, she had, when it suited her, accomplished its removal to the old outhouse, where no one could be disturbed by it. It was not so much the noise she minded, as the sight of useless hours and misdirected energies. On coming into her property she had shown herself a capable business woman, and she managed the large farming operations in connection with it with ability and success. It had never seemed to occur to her to commit these matters to her husband, and he felt it a deep relief that he was spared an effort which he knew would have ended in failure. Early in their married life he had suspected that his wife felt her marriage to have been a foolish one, and as time went on the certainty of this conviction settled upon him. But then came the children, and in them, without doubt, she was more than compensated for her disappointment in her husband. She was a woman of great shrewdness, and her decision that her husband had no capacity in him but music, once made, she ceased to expect anything but music from him. For herself, she had no respect for music as an art, and no perception of it as an enjoyment, and she did not scruple to say so. One day her husband heard her say to a friend, that she prayed every morning and evening of her life that she might never have a musical child. He never forgot that moment. It was not said to him, but she evidently had no objection to his hearing it. It was only an incidental remark, and the two women went on with the discussion of household affairs, from which it had been an off-shoot. As for Eastin, his heart-strings tightened, his breath came quick, his throat hurt him, and his eyeballs grew hot with the repression of tears. A sick terror seemed to take possession of him, and when he turned and walked to the window, his eyes seemed to look out on absolute despair.