Coming nearer, Yermah looked down into the white heat of the pink-throated cavern. “O Thou Sacred Fire! Thy kiss was welcome to her sweet lips. Feast Thou on mine!” With the fervor of an enthusiast he rushed forward to fling himself headlong into the yawning chasm, but a dazzling effulgence obscured the way, and a voice from the land of shadows said: “Yermah, son of light, no further sacrifice is required of thee!” It was the gentle, unseen hand of Akaza which halted the action * * * then a Higher Power suffered Yermah’s lifeless body to be at rest. “Kerœcia, beloved, receive thy twin spirit!” he cried, in passing. In the transcendent radiance of the Presence enveloping all, the twain appeared—transfigured and glorified. Being thus reunited, Kerœcia realized for the first time that she was out of the body. * * * * * Yermah was neither Krishna, nor the Christ, but the Ideal Man of all time, and of all people. He was LOVE, the eternal mystery; that love which Madame de Staël has said confounds all notion of time, effaces all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end. FINIS ----- Footnote 1: The modern name is preferably employed. Footnote 2: Modern name preferably employed. Footnote 3: J. M. Hutchings in “The High Sierras.” Footnote 4: Indian name for Mirror Lake. Footnote 5: Modern names are preferably employed. Footnote 6: This head is in the Museum in the City of Mexico. It was found in 1830 in the streets of Santa Teresa by some workmen while excavating for the foundation of a new house. Footnote 7: The giant Gulliver bound in a net-work of threads by the Lilliputians is a familiar mythical form of the same belief—Gulliver representing the whole human family with its net-work of desires and illusions. Footnote 8: Modern names preferably used. Footnote 9: Indian Legend. Footnote 10: From the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Footnote 11: Later, in all the distorted legends of Adam Kadmon, the cosmic man,—Woman was accused of causing his fall through lustful desire; and what was originally an allegory of initiation, or of being able to distinguish between the true and the false in the battle-ground of our own hearts, has been perverted into a literal interpretation of dread consequence. This false idea has degraded millions of men and women. Footnote 12: Aleutian Island chain. Footnote 13: In the year 1866, a miner found Akaza’s skull, while sinking a shaft in a strata of gravel one hundred and thirty-seven feet below the surface. It was in a beautiful flat, about fifteen miles north of Table Mountain, a mass of basaltic lava, six hundred feet thick, which was not erupted until after Akaza’s death.