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.
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