rdom, and confided to her her last wishes. Then, closeting
herself in her chambers, she awaited, in prayer and meditation, the hour
which was to witness her reunion with her Beloved. She was pacing the
floor of her room, chanting a litany expressive of both grief and triumph,
when the farra_sh_es of Aziz _Kh_an-i-Sardar arrived, in the dead of
night, to conduct her to the Il_kh_ani garden, which lay beyond the city
gates, and which was to be the site of her martyrdom. When she arrived the
Sardar was in the midst of a drunken debauch with his lieutenants, and was
roaring with laughter; he ordered offhand that she be strangled at once
and thrown into a pit. With that same silken kerchief which she had
intuitively reserved for that purpose, and delivered in her last moments
to the son of Kalantar who accompanied her, the death of this immortal
heroine was accomplished. Her body was lowered into a well, which was then
filled with earth and stones, in the manner she herself had desired.

Thus ended the life of this great Babi heroine, the first woman suffrage
martyr, who, at her death, turning to the one in whose custody she had
been placed, had boldly declared: "You can kill me as soon as you like,
but you cannot stop the emancipation of women." Her career was as dazzling
as it was brief, as tragic as it was eventful. Unlike her
fellow-disciples, whose exploits remained, for the most part unknown, and
unsung by their contemporaries in foreign lands, the fame of this immortal
woman was noised abroad, and traveling with remarkable swiftness as far as
the capitals of Western Europe, aroused the enthusiastic admiration and
evoked the ardent praise of men and women of divers nationalities,
callings and cultures. Little wonder that 'Abdu'l-Baha should have joined
her name to those of Sarah, of Asiyih, of the Virgin Mary and of Fatimih,
who, in the course of successive Dispensations, have towered, by reason of
their intrinsic merits and unique position, above the rank and file of
their sex. "In eloquence," 'Abdu'l-Baha Himself has written, "she was the
calamity of the age, and in ratiocination the trouble of the world." He,
moreover, has described her as "a brand afire with the love of God" and "a
lamp aglow with the bounty of God."

Indeed the wondrous story of her life propagated itself as far and as fast
as that of the Bab Himself, the direct Source of her inspiration. "Prodige
de science, mais aussi prodige de beaute" is the tr