He was only to be a friend, it was true, but he still felt that from friendship to love was but a step, and that the time would come.

He thought of the mighty wooings of the heroes of his Northern home, and he felt in him their strength and their constancy.

What were other men that he should think of them?
He was her accepted friend of all others.

She had said she hoped to find in him what she had never found before; and were not her words "always, always!" still ringing in his ears?
She had found it then in him, this rare quality of friendship; she had found more,--a man who was a friend and yet a lover, but who could curb the strong passion to the semblance and docility of the gentler feeling.

And when at last she should give the long-desired sign, the single glance that bids love speak, she would find such a lover as was not even dreamt of among the gods of the Greeks, nor yet among berserk heroes of ice and storm and battle.