Eyes and ears hungrily drinking in strange sights and sounds, and thoughts darting back and forth from the land of Tolstoy, Turgenieff, and Dostoievsky to the Russia of Ivan’s dreaming, I almost forgot that I had a destination, and a rapidly increasing appetite. Suddenly one of the three women who had taken me under their wings touched me on the shoulder and motioned me to follow. She left her friends, and together we walked blocks and blocks, while she searched silently for street numbers, and I tried to look the gratitude I could not speak. Finally she stopped, smiling happily, and pointed to a sign that read “64.” Then, with a cheery, friendly “Dosvidanya!” (Goodbye!), she left me. I knocked on the first door. The _dvornik_ shook his head. Then I tried the second. I battered at a dozen before I realized that in Russia the entire building has the same number. At last, up five flights of stairs, I found a gleam of recognition in the eyes of the servant. She made it clear by means of the sign language that there was no one at home. But at sight of my crest-fallen face she invited me in, and for half an hour tried vainly to reach my friend by telephone. She wept with exasperation at her inability to help me, and to make herself understood. It was half-past three when I found myself again on the tree-bordered canal. I was still without breakfast or luncheon, and heaven and the Russians only knew what had become of the Hotel Europe. Both seemed to be involved in a conspiracy of silence on the subject. I wandered up the canal, stopping every likely and unlikely person to ask if they spoke English. Always I got the same headshake and the same kindly “Nyet, nyet, barishna!” I came out upon a huge square, crowded with ambulances and field-wagons, automobiles, and trucks, filled with crippled soldiers and sailors, men from the ranks who had already paid the heavy toll of war,--armless men and legless men, and men with eyes to which sight would never come back,--all were pleading with their able-bodied brothers to fight to a victorious conclusion. It was a war demonstration, a pitiful, futile attempt of the broken men to rally their brothers to a standard they were rapidly deserting. For the first time, my eyes were seeing what war does to human flesh. I stood there, watching the faces of these men, listening to the unintelligible torrent of eloquence that poured from their lips, and thought sorrowfully of another country half way across the world making ready for this. Finally I recalled my quest. Surely in all that vast throng there must be some one who spoke English. I walked in and out, trying one and another; meeting always with that same bewildered headshake, and that same sympathetic glance of true regret which every Russian, be he prince or peasant, gives you when he is unable to do the thing you ask.