What else could one do, when the golden moment had come, but sit in the carriage and measure it?
They climbed the broad stone steps together and passed under the lofty gravures into the garden, and I waited.

I waited and remembered.

I am not, as perhaps by this time is evident, a person of overwhelming sentiment, but I think the smile upon my lips was gentle.

So plainly I could see, beyond the massive archway and across a score of years, all that they saw at that moment--Arjamand's garden, and the long straight tank of marble cleaving it full of sleeping water and the shadows of the marshaling cypresses; her wide dark garden of roses and of pomegranates, and at the end the Vision, marvellous, aerial, the soul of something--is it beauty?
is it sorrow ?--that great white pride of love in mourning such as only here in all the round of our little world lifts itself to the stars, the unpaintable, indescribable Taj Mahal.

A gentle breath stole out with a scent of jessamine and such a memory! I closed my eyes and felt the warm luxury of a tear.
Thinking of the two in the garden, my mood was very kind, very conniving.