For I know there has not been that and I should have known it anywhere in all these years, the chill of it would have found me, the sharpness of it would have been in my heart--no matter where, no matter how far--yet say it, say it once--say that you have loved me, too--" "God knows how I have loved you--how I love you now!" Unorna said in a low, unsteady voice.
The light that had been in his face grew brighter still as she spoke, while she looked at him, wondering, her head thrown back against the high chair, her eyelids wet and drooping, her lips still parted, her hand in his.

Small wonder if he had loved her for herself, she was so beautiful.

Small wonder it would have been if she had taken Beatrice's place in his heart during those weeks of close and daily converse.
But that first great love had left no fertile ground in which to plant another seed, no warmth of kindness under which the tender shoot might grow to strength, no room beneath its heaven for other branches than its own.

Alone it had stood in majesty as a lordly tree, straight, tall, and ever green, on a silent mountain top.

Alone it had borne the burden of grief's heavy snows; unbent, for all its loneliness, it had stood against the raging tempest; and green still, in all its giant strength of stem and branch, in all its kingly robe of unwithered foliage.
Unscathed, unshaken, it yet stood.