Sometimes the poets whose works he read made love so charmingly that Latimer was most grateful to them for rendering such excellent first aid to the wounded, and into his voice he would throw all that feeling and music that from juries and mass meetings had dragged tears and cheers and votes.
But when his voice became so appealing that it no longer was possible for any woman to resist it, Helen would exclaim excitedly: "Please excuse me for interrupting, but there is a large spider--" and the spell was gone.
One day she exclaimed: "Oh!" and Latimer patiently lowered the "Oxford Book of Verse," and asked: "What is it, NOW ?" "I'm so sorry," Helen said, "but I can't help watching that Chapman boy; he's only got one reef in, and the next time he jibs he'll capsize, and he can't swim, and he'll drown.

I told his mother only yesterday--" "I haven't the least interest in the Chapman boy," said Latimer, "or in what you told his mother, or whether he drowns or not! I'm a drowning man myself!" Helen shook her head firmly and reprovingly.

"Men get over THAT kind of drowning," she said.
"Not THIS kind of man doesn't!" said Latimer.

"And don't tell me," he cried indignantly, "that that's ANOTHER thing they all say." "If one could only be sure!" sighed Helen.

"If one could only be sure that you--that the right man would keep on caring after you marry him the way he says he cares before you marry him.