And I never sleep, at least not since I met her." From her throne among the pine needles Helen looked up at the sailorman and frowned.
"It is not a happy simile," she objected.

"For one thing, a sailorman has a sweetheart in every port." "Wait and see," said Latimer.
"And," continued the girl with some asperity, "if there is anything on earth that changes its mind as often as a weather-vane, that is less CERTAIN, less CONSTANT--" "Constant ?" Latimer laughed at her in open scorn.

"You come back here," he challenged, "months from now, years from now, when the winds have beaten him, and the sun blistered him, and the snow frozen him, and you will find him smiling at you just as he is now, just as confidently, proudly, joyously, devotedly.

Because those who are your slaves, those who love YOU, cannot come to any harm; only if you disown them, only if you drive them away!" The sailorman, delighted at such beautiful language, threw himself about in a delirium of joy.

His arms spun in their sockets like Indian clubs, his oars flashed in the sun, and his eyes and lips were fixed in one blissful, long-drawn-out, unalterable smile.
When the golden-rod turned gray, and the leaves red and yellow, and it was time for Latimer to return to his work in the West, he came to say good-by.