That night, on the roof-garden of the Europe, overlooking the glistening domes and spires of the City of Peter, I dined with friends. I had stumbled upon them when I had ceased to look. “Where are you stopping?” one of them asked. “At the War Hotel,” I answered. Mouths and eyes opened in chorus. “But it is impossible!” they said. “That is for the military, and they are most strict that no civilian be admitted.” I told them the story of the three Good Samaritans--of the little woman with the shawl over her head, who left the car, her friends, and her own pleasure, to walk blocks through the scorching sun with a total stranger; of the maid who almost wept in her distress because she could not help me; and, last, of the dark-haired knight of the Caucasus, who made Cinderella’s fairy godmother seem a mere stepmother by comparison. Back in the little blue-and-white room, wrapped in the warm glow of their kindliness, I sat down in a bewildered heap to think it over. My mind wandered far that night,--into the black past of Russia, and into the vague unknown future,--but never did it even remotely suspect the stirring times that room and I would share together in the year to come. CHAPTER II DIPLOMATS--OFFICIAL AND OTHERWISE It was less than a week after my early morning advent in Petrograd when I once more passed before the candle-lighted ikons in the Nicolaiski Station and out to the platform. This time the station was far from deserted. A line of soldiers, a picked escort of stalwart men in dun-colored coats, stood at attention. The tall, dark, handsome young Foreign Minister, Tereshchenko, towered above the genial white-vested person of the American Ambassador Francis. The American colony was out in force. The Provisional Government of Russia, successor of Tsar and bureaucracy, between Cabinet crises and food problems, had found time to prepare to entertain. Ambassador-Extraordinary Root and the special diplomatic mission to Russia were due to arrive at any moment. Earlier in the day I had wandered curiously through the great corridors of the rambling old Winter Palace and watched the servants putting the finishing touches upon the mansion of the Czars. With the true Russian sense of the dramatic, the new hosts of all the Russias had chosen to be at home to their republican brothers from over the seas in the very premises where royal heads were once held highest and lackeys’ backs once bent lowest.