d in the
fierceness--the note that was the faintest hint of a croon of content and
that none but he could hear.

As the days went by, the evolution of _like_ into _love_ was accelerated.
White Fang himself began to grow aware of it, though in his consciousness
he knew not what love was. It manifested itself to him as a void in his
being--a hungry, aching, yearning void that clamoured to be filled. It
was a pain and an unrest; and it received easement only by the touch of
the new god's presence. At such times love was joy to him, a wild, keen-
thrilling satisfaction. But when away from his god, the pain and the
unrest returned; the void in him sprang up and pressed against him with
its emptiness, and the hunger gnawed and gnawed unceasingly.

White Fang was in the process of finding himself. In spite of the
maturity of his years and of the savage rigidity of the mould that had
formed him, his nature was undergoing an expansion. There was a
burgeoning within him of strange feelings and unwonted impulses. His old
code of conduct was changing. In the past he had liked comfort and
surcease from pain, disliked discomfort and pain, and he had adjusted his
actions accordingly. But now it was different. Because of this new
feeling within him, he ofttimes elected discomfort and pain for the sake
of his god. Thus, in the early morning, instead of roaming and foraging,
or lying in a sheltered nook, he would wait for hours on the cheerless
cabin-stoop for a sight of the god's face. At night, when the god
returned home, White Fang would leave the warm sleeping-place he had
burrowed in the snow in order to receive the friendly snap of fingers and
the word of greeting. Meat, even meat itself, he would forego to be with
his god, to receive a caress from him or to accompany him down into the
town.

_Like_ had been replaced by _love_. And love was the plummet dropped
down into the deeps of him where like had never gone. And responsive out
of his deeps had come the new thing--love. That which was given unto him
did he return. This was a god indeed, a love-god, a warm and radiant
god, in whose light White Fang's nature expanded as a flower expands
under the sun.

But White Fang was not demonstrative. He was too old, too firmly
moulded, to become adept at expressing himself in new ways. He was too
self-possessed, too strongly poised in his own isolation. Too long had
he cultivated reticence, aloofness, and moroseness.