At last he stretched out his hands in a gesture of supplication--he who throughout his thirty-eight years of life, and despite the misfortunes that had been his, had never yet stooped to plead from any man.
"Jocelyn," he cried, and the pain in his voice must have melted a heart of steel, "you are hard.

Have you forgotten the story of my miserable life, the story that I told you in Worcester?
Can you not understand how suffering may destroy all that is lofty in a man; how the forgetfulness of the winecup may come to be his only consolation; the hope of vengeance his only 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.