And this was no moment's passion,--the love that he had for her. Bill was not given to fluency of emotion. He was a northern man, intense as fire but slow to emotional response. He had known the great discipline of the forest; he was not one to lose himself in infatuation or sentimentality. He only knew that he loved her, and no event of life could make him change. He had had dreams, this man; but they were never so concrete, so fond as these dreams that swept him now. In the soft candlelight the girl's beauty moved him and glorified him, the very fact of her presence thrilled him to the depths, the wistfulness and appeal in her face seemed to burn him like fire. This northern land was never the home of weak or half-felt emotions. The fine shades and subtle gradations of feelings were unknown to the northern people, but they had full knowledge of the primordial passions. They could hate as the she-wolf hates the foe that menaces her cubs, and they could love to the moment of death. He knew that whatever fate life had in store for him it could not change his attitude toward her. She would leave the North and go back to her own people, and still he would be true. Even in the first instant he knew enough not to hope. They would have their northern adventure together, and then she would leave him to his snows and his trackless forests. She would go to her own land, a place of mirth and joy and warmth, to leave him brooding and silent in his waste places. He knew that all his days this same dream would be before his eyes, this wistful-eyed, tender girl, this lovely flower of the South. Nothing could change him. The years would come and go--spring and summer flowering in the forest, dancing once and tripping on to a softer, gentler land; fall would touch the shrubs with color, whisk off the golden leaves of the quivering aspen, and speed way; and winter, drear and cheerless, would shroud the land in snow--and find his love unswerving. The forest folk would mate in fall, the caribou calves would open their wondering eyes in spring, the moose would bathe and wallow in the lakes in summer, and in winter the venerable grizzly would seek his lair, and still his dreams, in his lonely cabin, would be unchanged. His love would never lessen or increase. He had held none of it back; no more could be given or taken away. He had given his all.