My eyes wandered to the vestibule, where a Siberian soldier sat upon his kit-bag, a tin can with a bunch of dead lilies-of-the-valley held tightly in his two hands. For ten days and ten nights he had sat there, his big, round, brown eyes looking out across the great spaces, resignation and the infinite patience of these people of the East and the North reflected in his face. Home for him was done up in that little bunch of lilies-of-the-valley, long since dead. Every day I had passed him on my way to the dining-car, and my body ached with vicarious weariness as I saw him uncomplainingly sitting and dreaming over the faded lilies. He and I, of all the passengers, were the only ones who were not going home. My musings were suddenly cut short. The Trans-Siberian Express, train de luxe of the longest railroad in the world, was slipping quietly to its place beside a deserted platform. A clean-cut young Englishman, on his way to be married in Petrograd, adjusted his coat collar the final time, and patted his hat to see that it was placed at the proper angle. Then he put his head out of the window to receive the first welcoming smile of the sweetheart he had not seen for a year. He drew his head in again, surprise, pain, embarrassment mingled on his fine, boyish face. She was not there. Farther down the aisle, Count Tolstoy, son of the great Tolstoy, returning from America, lifted his window and searched the vacant platform for the face of his wife. He, too, turned back disappointed. Petrograd was as unaware of us as though we had been so many ghosts flitting invisibly through the air. Petrograd was entirely engrossed in its own very important affairs. Even the station-master had failed to take cognizance of our coming. In the absence of porters, we trucked our own baggage; and we had to wake up the guard to unlock the door and let us through. Outside, the big circle was flooded with the light of the white night. My eyes focused for a moment on Trubetskoy’s squat, heavy, powerful granite man on horseback, Alexander III,--symbol of departed Romanoffs, symbol of dead Russia,--then wandered about in dazed bewilderment. The cobblestones were dotted with men and women gathered in groups and talking in high-pitched, excited voices, eyes blazing and arms waving: students, peasants, soldiers, workmen, pouring a torrent of words into the night. “What is the matter? Is it another revolution?” I asked breathlessly. “No,” some one answered, “nothing is happening. They are just talking. It has been like this ever since March.” “But it’s the middle of the night,” I said. “It’s nearly morning. Something must be wrong.” “They talk all day and all night, all the time,” my informant continued. “In the old days, you know, they were not allowed to talk, and now that the dam is broken, the flood of language never stops.”