"What shall you do if I stay?" she asked.
"I beg you to stay," said the Governor. "You shall be protected. You
need have no fear."
"Your words are beautiful," she replied. "But if American and Turkey
go to war you will deport me."
If she stayed she knew the risks under his rule. She was still weak
from her illness. There was no colleague by her side to help her.
There seemed to be every reason why she should sail away back to
America. But as she sat thinking it over she saw before her the
hospital full of wounded soldiers, the six hundred orphans who looked
to her for help, the plain of a hundred villages to which she was
sending food. No one could take her place.
Yet she was weak and tired after her illness and, in America, rest and
home, friends and safety called to her.
"It was," she wrote later to her friends, "a heavy problem to know
what to do with the orphans and other helpless people who depended on
me for life."
What would you have done? What do you think she did? For what reason
should she face these perils?
Not in the heat of battle, but in cool quiet thought, all alone among
enemies, she saw her path and took it. She did not count her life her
own. She was ready to give her life for her friends of all nations.
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