Paul felt relieved as far as that went, for Louis had never lied to him.
"But these cards. Are these yours?"
"Yes."
"How long have you had them?"
"I got them yesterday."
"Give them to me." Louis handed them over and Paul tore them across again and again and flung the pieces into the waste paper basket. Louis had never seen his father angry like that before. He shrank and cowered back while his father said:
"Louis, I would almost rather see you in your coffin than with those vile things in your hands and their foul imaginings in your heart. Do you realise what this will lead to? Your manhood will be blasted! your soul blackened! your body tortured! all the angel in you turned into animal———"
Paul nearly broke down himself. He shuddered and for one instant Louis really caught a glimpse into the horror that sin causes.
But Paul Douglas was not a cowardly father nor one who is content to leave it to boys to learn unaided bitter lessons from evil. He sat down by Louis and gave him the plainest talk on the subject of personal purity the boy had ever had. And the effect on him in all his after life was even more than either Paul or Esther had dared to hope. Paul never did a better hour's work. When he was through, Louis was completely broken. In the moment of his cry to his father for help, Paul kneeled by him, put his arm around him and prayed for him such a prayer of appeal and hope and good cheer that Louis Douglas will never forget. The whole thing was the beginning of a new manhood for the boy. And when the next day he plucked up courage to confess to his mother, one of the hardest things he ever did in all his life, the entire unfolding of his mother's love, her passionate appeal to his better nature, her cry to him to seek God's help in overcoming all, overwhelmed him. Again the boy caught a glimpse of the mightiness of father and mother affection and young as he was he came from that soul yearning of Esther with a manly determination in his boyish heart not to disappoint either father or mother in the struggle he would make to be true to the high calling. For as the time slipped away many and many a time he was reminded of the black pit on the edge of which he had almost slipped, to fall into its slimy and murky abyss, and perhaps never again come up into the pure sweet air of God under his blue sky and its silver stars. O Louis, you will never be able to measure the rescue your father and mother made for you at that crisis when your soul was wandering over the treeless moor of passion.