This quality was the same which arouses an animal similarly thwarted to the highest pitch of ferocity. Passion, heretofore a latent force strengthening and sweetening his whole nature, now suddenly flared into tempestuous activity on its own account. Opposition at this juncture would have rendered Yermah capable of murder. The line of demarcation between the virgin mind and partial realization was forever obliterated. Yermah knew desire. And its demands were all the more urgent because of long-delayed expression. CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE VIRGIN EARTH WILL NOT SUBMIT TO MAN’S DEFILEMENT Akaza tottered along the shore, shaken and agonized by Yermah’s anger. The wind tangled his thin locks, and played sad pranks with the mantle enveloping his body. Sometimes it seemed bent on snapping him in two, and then it almost whipped the life out of him—that life tenure which was feeble and old even when Yermah’s generation began. The tears streamed down his withered cheeks and dripped unheeded from the snow-white beard. His breathing was labored and hard when he arrived at the entrance to the cave, and his slight frame shook with emotion as he turned toward the broad Pacific, seeking to calm his agitation. He stretched out his hands imploringly to the vast deep spread out before him, as the waves, with a sullen roar, dashed their spray over the rocks at his feet. “Great God!” he cried in a stricken voice, “My heart bleeds for Yermah. The rays of the sun should make a halo around his dear head.—How hard that there is no real strength except that born of suffering—no enduring experience except it be seared into the heart’s core!—I have tried not to attach myself to results; but how can I help it?—Oh, Amrah! I shall not fail thee! Amenti, thou canst trust me! My oath binds me for all time. This body may succumb in the trial, but I will deliver this trust back to thee as thou art expecting to receive it!—Give me strength to stand by helplessly while Yermah suffers! Oh, Brotherhood, give me the strength to endure!” He sank down upon a rock from sheer exhaustion and was silent. For a time there was no sign of life in the bent motionless figure peering far out into space, as if he were seeing the visioned future. “Oh, woman!” he cried, “Divine part of creative wisdom!—Incarnation of man’s ideal of spiritual perfection! When will man recognize in thee the means of reorganizing the world, and place thee on the pedestal of his intellectual greatness! When will he cease to crucify thee on the diverse and conflicting polarity of his passional will? Woman lies a crushed and soiled lily; while man, the victim of vengeance to the powers of nature, wanders a fugitive on the earth, chained to the hell of his depraved imagination—The Great Spirit of Light and Wisdom is to him a tormenting fiend!”