motive for living on, withholding him from self-destruction?
Can you not picture such a life, and can you not pity and
forgive much of the wreck that it may make of a man once
virtuous and honourable?"

Pleadingly he looked into the lad's face. It remained cold and
unmoved.

"I understand," he continued brokenly, "that I am not such a
man as any lad might welcome for a father. But you who know
what my life has been, Jocelyn, you can surely find it in your
heart to pity. I had naught that was good or wholesome to live
for, Jocelyn; naught to curb the evil moods that sent me along
evil ways to seek forgetfulness and reparation.

"But from to-night, Jocelyn, my life in you must find a new
interest, a new motive. I will abandon my old ways. For your
sake, Jocelyn, I will seek again to become what I was, and you
shall have no cause to blush for your father."

Still the lad stood silent.

"Jocelyn! My God, do I talk in vain?" cried the wretched man.
"Have you no heart, no pity, boy?"

At last the youth spoke. He was not moved. The agony of this
strong man, the broken pleading of one whom he had ever known
arrogant and strong had no power to touch his mean, selfish
mind, consumed as it was by the contemplation of his undoing -
magnified a hundredfold - which this man had wrought.