"Yes, poor child! It was just so that Edith began. She met a handsome young man. She thought him a gentleman because he dressed fine. She let him hold her hand, then put his arm around her and kiss her, and so, little by little, he led her on, and she thought it was all so nice,--and now she is friendless and in great trouble." "Mother, it makes me think of a little girl I saw at the seaside last summer. She was dancing on the edge of the waves. They came up and washed over her little pink toes and she laughed with delight. After a time the tide rose a little higher and the waves dashed over her feet and still she thought it fun; and then came one big wave and threw her down and carried her out to sea, and if there hadn't been some sailors right there with a boat she would have been drowned,--and all the time she thought it fun till the last wave came, and then she was frightened awfully." "Your illustration is a very good one, my daughter, and I fear that poor Belle is dancing in the gentle foam of a wave that will grow in power till it carries her out to sea, a lost girl." "Mother, I really don't see how a girl can let a man become so familiar with her. I should think it would disgust her at once; and yet Edith seemed like a perfect lady." "No doubt you will understand this puzzling matter better after a few years than you do now, but I can explain it to you partly. It is a part of human nature that men and women are very attractive to each other, and in a way that does not exist between men and men or women and women. It may be called a sort of personal magnetism. As they begin to develop into men and women, they begin to feel this new attraction. They want to please each other. New feelings and emotions are felt. If their hands touch, they feel a sort of electric thrill, even the glance of the eye may cause the same thrill. They enjoy it, and they do not know what it means. They do not know that, while it is pleasant, it is also dangerous. "Girls are more ignorant than young men, because, as a rule, they have been taught less. The young men know more, but in all probability they have not learned from sources that are pure. The young girl does not understand that her coquettish glances and tossings of the head and simperings are so many intuitive efforts to awaken that sort of magnetic thrill in the young man. If she knew it, she would see that it is more maidenly to hold in check all actions that would tend to make the young man desire to be familiar with her." "But, mother, if it is not right to be familiar, why does God make us with those desires?"