Another motive which prompted him to stay was a natural and unconquerable self-distrust, which warned him unceasingly that failure and disappointment were to be his lot in life. There was still a third motive--stronger, perhaps, than either of the others, and the one of all the three which he was most reluctant to own. This was a feeling deep in his soul, that a return to the conditions of life which he had once known would put him to a terrible test. His artistic temperament made him keenly susceptible to appeals to the senses, and during all these years his senses had been so starved that he was actually afraid to go willfully into places of temptation. A life of that sort would be infinitely more dangerous to him now than it had been before, for the reason that in youth he had always an ideal to live up to, and he had no ideal now. He had then been constrained to keep from self-abasement by the thought of bringing a clean body and soul to offer to the woman he would some day love. But the clear star of ideal love no longer shone for him, and the thought of what he might do if opportunity came was a powerful restraint upon him. This, with the two other strong reasons, was sufficient to bind him to the spot of earth on which his wife and children lived. He was not without a real attachment to his family, and he was proud of the two healthy boys and the two rosy-faced girls in a deprecating sort of way, which implied his knowledge that he deserved the least possible credit for them. But these were quiet, serious feelings, which had more the nature of opinions than emotions. He had been acutely disappointed to find almost immediately after his marriage that his wife was in no sense a companion to him, and he had since become convinced that any possibility of a companionship with his children was out of the question. So all those prayers had been in vain! There was pain intolerable in the thought, but he did not cease to pray. His one hope of getting his prayer was the intensity of its earnestness. It was, therefore, a shock that stunned his very soul to hear his wife say that she had been praying all the time that what he asked might be withheld. What more natural than that her prayers should have been granted, and his denied? She was a good and religious woman, who never omitted going to church or any religious duty. She was almost the support of the minister, and was generous in her gifts to missions and charities. He, poor old musician and dreamer, rarely saw the inside of a church, and when he did, he felt, as he said himself, like a poor relation admitted on sufferance. Often he played prayers on his violin, which he felt upbore his soul to God, and he sometimes passionately felt that if God would give him his heart’s desire he would make the remainder of his life an act of praise and thanks to Him.