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.