He had not waited for Allston that evening nor attempted to trail him home. He knew better than that. He must see straight and have a steady hand when he met the man again. In the condition he was then in he could not have been sure of his aim at ten feet. And he meant to be sure--next time. But the process of calming down was no simple one. Hour after hour he paced his cabin floor until finally, exhausted, he tumbled into a heap on his bed and slept. When he awoke it was the same thing all over again. And yet slowly, out of this jumble of emotions, two finally detached themselves or perhaps absorbed the others; hate--black hate--of this man Allston, and love--fire-like love--of Roxie Kester. Or perhaps his passion resolved itself, in the final analysis, into the single passion of love. For Love is the mother of every passion, and mother-like shelters all her brood, even those which turn against her and eat away at her heart. A man may hate beyond the possibility of loving, but a man may love and yet hate at one and the same time. If Bud had desired Roxie before, he desired her with a fervor a hundred times as strong now. There were moments when she drove every other desire out of his head and heart--even all thought of Allston. Whenever he was able to let himself go utterly, she washed away even those crimson spots that danced before his eyes. It was then as though just he and she were alone in the world. Yet they knew not loneliness. Two only they might be out of hundreds of millions, but it was the hundreds of millions who were alone, not they. Because they would be up here on this mountain-side where the trees were many and friendly, where the birds and squirrels would be their playmates by day; where, by night, the stars and planets would be their fellows. Bud was never as definite as that, but something of the sort he sensed whenever he thought of her. She was more one with such things than she was with folk--even as he was. He had always been able to get along up here. The trees and the denizens among them had never interfered with him. Forest creatures let a man alone. And he, in his way, had always been kind to them. He had a feel for them. Animals were not afraid of him, though often enough he lost his temper and abused them, and, when necessary, killed them without emotion. But he spent weeks nursing an injured chicken back to health and kept an old gray horse for years after she was quite useless. No dog had ever come to his shack for food and gone away hungry, though many a man had done so. Bud had a notion that it was not man who was basic, but Nature. This new love of his--for it was new, a development of his initial desire--was one with Nature. It had to do with elemental things. Had he been religious he might have said it had to do with God. But after that, to have been consistent, he would have had to say this black hate had to do with the Devil.