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Rh Wunderschön!" the loudest voice proclaimed. Then clouds skimmed over the moon, dimming the Taj, which was suddenly transformed to silver and frosted ivory again as the moon rode out. The "Wunderschön" voices continued down the path until smothered in the staircase inside the platform, came out full-lunged on the terrace, and there proclaimed with greater volume the wonderful beauty of the white building. Echoes came from the domed hall, then the faint, glow-worm light of the custodian's lantern led the voluble gutturals around the octagon and down to the tombs. Next cockney voices came down the garden walk—some "Tommies" from the cantonment with their "’Arriets," who, skylarking down to the terrace, with an all-hands-round at the entrance of the platform stairway, chased, shrieking, up the inner stairway and came out on the platform with shouts of laughter, each slim, trim figure in red coat and box cap standing out distinct in color in the moonlight. Disenchanted, we fled through the darkest garden paths. It was sacrilege of the rankest kind for those sweethearting couples to be skylarking around the marble screen of the tombs, dropping their barbarous "h's" to summon the echo, the pure soul of the Taj Mahal.

For four days we haunted the garden of the Taj, for by noonday, sunset, and moonlight it took on as many rarer qualities and aspects; and six times a day, as we drove those long miles to and from the gateway, we berated the hotel-keepers for not putting the hotel where it should be. The guardians and keepers at the Taj came to know us, the touts