We lunched in the Government bungalow, a comfortable place, not glaringly out of keeping with the surroundings, and then motored to Akbar’s tomb—­another piece of colossal magnificence.  I was awed by it.  Out of the glaring sunshine we went down a long dark passage to a great vault, where the air was cold with the coldness of death.  It was completely dark except for one ray of light falling on the plain marble tomb.  An old Mohammedan crooned eerily, impressively, a lament which echoed round and round the vault.  The Mohammedans and the Scots have a similar passion for deaths and funerals!

Lastly, in its fitting order, we drove to the Taj Mahal.

You know the story?  I have just been reading about it in Steevens’s book.  You know how Shah Jehan, grandson of Akbar, first Mogul Emperor of Hindustan, loved and married the beautiful Persian Arjmand Banu,—­called Mumtaz-i-Mahal,—­and when she died he, in his grief, swore that she should have the loveliest tomb the world ever beheld, and for seventeen years he built the Taj Mahal?  You know how after thirty years his son rose up and dethroned him, and kept him a close prisoner for seven years in the Gem Mosque, where his daughter Jehanara attended him and would not leave him.  When grown very feeble, he begged to be laid where he could see the Taj Mahal; and, the request being granted, you know how he died with his face towards the tomb of the beautiful Persian, “whose palankeen followed all his campaigns in the days when Empire was still a-winning, whose children called him father—­Arjmand Banu, silent and unseen now for four-and-thirty years, the wife of his youth.”

Such a passionate old story!  Such a marvellous love-memorial!  Shah Jehan—­Mumtaz-i-Mahal—­Grape Garden—­Golden Pavilion—­Jasmine Tower.  As G.W.  Steevens says, there is dizzy-magic in the very names.  I am no more capable of describing it than I would have been capable of building it; you must see it for yourself.  It alone is worth coming to India to see.

Leaving the Taj Mahal dazed and dizzy with beauty, I was hailed by a voice that sounded familiar, and turning round I saw—­an incongruous figure in that Arabian Nights garden—­our old friend of the Scotia, the Rocking Horse Fly.  She had another female with her, and Mr. Brand, the funny man who asked conundrums.  I’m afraid my eyes had asked what he was doing in this galley, for he hastily said that he had only arrived in Agra that morning, and found our Scotia acquaintance at the hotel.  I introduced Boggley, and we stood uncomfortably about, while the Rocking Horse Fly waxed sentimental over our meeting.

“Isn’t it odd,” she said, “that we should all meet and just part again?”