u'l-Baha on His triumphant return from the West, I will not venture to
describe. She was astounded at the vitality of which He had, despite His
unimaginable sufferings, proved Himself capable. She was lost in
admiration at the magnitude of the forces which His utterances had
released. She was filled with thankfulness to Baha'u'llah for having
enabled her to witness the evidences of such brilliant victory for His
Cause no less than for His Son.

The outbreak of the Great War gave her yet another opportunity to reveal
the true worth of her character and to release the latent energies of her
heart. The residence of 'Abdu'l-Baha in Haifa was besieged, all throughout
that dreary conflict, by a concourse of famished men, women and children
whom the maladministration, the cruelty and neglect of the officials of
the Ottoman Government had driven to seek an alleviation to their woes.
From the hand of the Greatest Holy Leaf, and out of the abundance of her
heart, these hapless victims of a contemptible tyranny, received day after
day unforgettable evidences of a love they had learned to envy and admire.
Her words of cheer and comfort, the food, the money, the clothing she
freely dispensed, the remedies which, by a process of her own, she herself
prepared and diligently applied--all these had their share in comforting
the disconsolate, in restoring sight to the blind, in sheltering the
orphan, in healing the sick, and in succoring the homeless and the
wanderer.

She had reached, amidst the darkness of the war days, the high water-mark
of her spiritual attainments. Few, if any, among the unnumbered
benefactors of society whose privilege has been to allay, in various
measures, the hardships and sufferings entailed by that Fierce Conflict,
gave as freely and as disinterestedly as she did; few exercised that
undefinable influence upon the beneficiaries of their gifts.

Age seemed to have accentuated the tenderness of her loving heart, and to
have widened still further the range of her sympathies. The sight of
appalling suffering around her steeled her energies and revealed such
potentialities that her most intimate associates had failed to suspect.

The ascension of 'Abdu'l-Baha, so tragic in its suddenness, was to her a
terrific blow, from the effects of which she never completely recovered.
To her He, whom she called "Aqa," had been a refuge in times of adversity.
On Him she had been led to place her sole reliance. In Him she had