be.
Consider these domes, rounded as the Bosom of Beauty, recalling the
mystic fruit of the lotus flower. Consider these four minars that stand
about them like Spirits about the Throne. And remembering that all this
shall stand upon a great dais of purest marble, and that the river shall
be its mirror, repeating to everlasting its loveliness, make me a garden
that shall be the throne room to this Queen."

And Ram Lal Kashmiri salaamed and said, "Obedience!" and went forth and
pondered night and day, journeying even over the snows of the Pir Panjal
to Kashmir, that he might bathe his eyes in beauty where she walks,
naked and divine, upon the earth, and he it was who imagined the black
marble and white that made the way of approach.

So grew the palace that should murmur, like a seashell, in the ear of
the world the secret of love.

Veiled had that loveliness been in the shadow of the palace; but now the
sun should rise upon it and turn its ivory to gold, should set upon
it and flush its snow with rose. The moon should lie upon it like the
pearls upon her bosom, the visible grace of her presence breathe about
it, the music of her voice hover in the birds and trees of the garden.
Times there were when Ustad Isa despaired lest even these mighty
servants of beauty should miss perfection. Yet it grew and grew, rising
like the growth of a flower.

So on a certain day it stood completed, and beneath the small tomb in
the sanctuary, veiled with screens of wrought marble so fine that
they might lift in the breeze,--the veils of a Queen,--slept the Lady
Arjemand; and above her a narrow coffer of white marble, enriched in
a great script with the Ninety-Nine Wondrous Names of God. And the
Shah-in-Shah, now grey and worn, entered and, standing by her, cried in
a loud voice,--"I ascribe to the Unity, the only Creator, the perfection
of his handiwork made visible here by the hand of mortal man. For the
beauty that was secret in my Palace is here revealed; and the Crowned
Lady shall sit forever upon the banks of the Jumna River. It was love
that commanded this Tomb."

And the golden echo carried his voice up into the high dome, and it died
away in whispers of music.

But Ustad Isa standing far off in the throng (for what are craftsmen
in the presence of the mighty?), said softly in his beard, "It was Love
also that built, and therefore it shall endure."

Now it is told that, on a certain night in summer, when the moon is
full,