f the great Cause of
God. In the tumult of the Year of Hin,(35) as a result of the sacking and
plundering of her glorious Father's wealth and holdings, she learned the
bitterness of destitution and want. Then she shared the imprisonment, the
grief, the banishment of the Abha Beauty, and in the storm which broke out
in 'Iraq--because of the plotting and the treachery of the prime mover of
mischief, the focal centre of hate--she bore, with complete resignation and
acquiescence, uncounted ordeals. She forgot herself, did without her kin,
turned aside from possessions, struck off at one blow the bonds of every
worldly concern; and then, like a lovelorn moth, she circled day and night
about the flame of the matchless Beauty of her Lord.

In the heaven of severance, she shone like the Morning Star, fair and
bright, and through her character and all her ways, she shed upon kin and
stranger, upon the learned, and the lowly, the radiance of Baha'u'llah's
surpassing perfection. Because of the intense and deep-seated sorrows and
the manifold oppressive trials that assailed her--never failing spring of
grace that she was, essence of loving-kindness--in the Land of Mystery(36)
her lovely form was worn away to a breath, to a shadow; and during the
Most Great Convulsion, which in the years of 'Stress' made every heart to
quake, she stood as a soaring pillar, immovable and fixed; and from the
blasts of desolation that rose and blew, that Leaf of the eternal
Lote-Tree did not wither.

Rather did she redouble her efforts, urging herself on the more, to
servitude and sacrifice. In captivating hearts and winning over souls, in
destroying doubts and misgivings, she led the field. With the waters of
her countless mercies, she brought thorny hearts to a blossoming of love
from the All-Glorious, and with the influence of her pure loving-kindness,
transformed the implacable, the unyielding, into impassioned lovers of the
celestial Beauty's peerless Cause.

Yet another wound was inflicted on her injured heart by the aggressions
and violations of the evil-doers within the prison-fortress,(37) yet
another blow was struck at her afflicted being. And then her anguish was
increased by the passing of the Abha Beauty, and the cruelty of the
disloyal added more fuel to the fires of her mourning. In the midst of
that storm of violation, the countenance of that rare treasure of the Lord
shone all the brighter, and throughout the Baha'i community, her val