last,' said Dacres, as the stewards came to lay the table. 'But I
wish,' he added regretfully, 'you could have thought of a test.'



Chapter 1.V.

Four days later we were in Agra. A time there was when the name
would have been the key of dreams to me; now it stood for John's
headquarters. I was rejoiced to think I would look again upon the
Taj; and the prospect of living with it was a real enchantment; but
I pondered most the kind of house that would be provided for the
General Commanding the District, how many the dining-room would
seat, and whether it would have a roof of thatch or of corrugated
iron--I prayed against corrugated iron. I confess these my
preoccupations. I was forty, and at forty the practical
considerations of life hold their own even against domes of marble,
world-renowned, and set about with gardens where the bulbul sings to
the rose. I smiled across the years at the raptures of my first
vision of the place at twenty-one, just Cecily's age. Would I now
sit under Arjamand's cypresses till two o'clock in the morning to
see the wonder of her tomb at a particular angle of the moon? Would
I climb one of her tall white ministering minarets to see anything
whatever? I very greatly feared that I would not. Alas for the
aging of sentiment, of interest! Keep your touch with life and your
seat in the saddle as long as you will, the world is no new toy at
forty. But Cecily was twenty-one, Cecily who sat stolidly finishing
her lunch while Dacres Tottenham talked about Akbar and his
philosophy. 'The sort of man,' he said, 'that Carlyle might have
smoked a pipe with.'