Why could he not abandon his whole soul to communion with God, as once he could, shutting out all save the sense of sin and the conviction of forgiveness?
He prayed for power to pray.

But, like the guilty king, he could not say Amen.

He could not bind his wandering thoughts, nor dispel the forward imaginings of his distempered mind.

He asked one thing, and in his heart desired another; he prayed, and did not desire an answer to his prayer; for when he tried to bow his heart in supplication, ever in the midst, between him and the throne before which he bent, came the form and the face and the voice he loved, and the temptation and the longing and the doubt.

And he was tost and driven about through the livelong night till, in utter weariness, he fell on the floor and slept..