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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: vision of the place at twenty-one, just Cecily's age. Would I now
sit under Arjamand's cypresses till two o'clock in the morning to
see the wonder of her tomb at a particular angle of the moon? Would
I climb one of her tall white ministering minarets to see anything
whatever? I very greatly feared that I would not. Alas for the
aging of sentiment, of interest! Keep your touch with life and your
seat in the saddle as long as you will, the world is no new toy at
forty. But Cecily was twenty-one, Cecily who sat stolidly finishing
her lunch while Dacres Tottenham talked about Akbar and his
philosophy. 'The sort of man,' he said, 'that Carlyle might have
smoked a pipe with.'
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