She shook her head, a simple gesture that I understood perfectly, then followed it with a volley of language which left me dazed. She looked at my blank and bewildered face. “American,” I said. Again she shook her head. Then a great light broke into her face. “Amerikanka, da, da, da!” she said, and laughed in pleased delight at her discovery. I handed her my paper with Moika 64 upon it. It was written in English and conveyed nothing to her. By this time the entire car had become interested. A simple-looking woman, with a _platok_ on her head, took the paper, and she and two companions consulted long and earnestly over it. They motioned me to wait. The car moved slowly up the wide wood-paved Nevsky; past faded brick and yellow stucco palaces, whose proud sides were pasted with revolutionary posters and proclamations; past the great Gostinny Dvor (Court of the Strangers), where the little shops were shuttered now in Sabbath seclusion behind the hedge of linden trees. Like the muddy water in a stream, the endless procession of khaki-clad soldiers flowed along the street. The feather-bed _izvostchiks_, calling encouragement to their horses, rattled over the wooden cobbles. Under the columns of the great Kazan Cathedral, the little people, dwarfed by the mighty proportions of this pile of masonry, passed back and forth, crossing themselves and dropping alms into the hands of beggars on the wide steps. On the gravel-covered paths in the formal garden the children played hop-scotch, while their parents sat on the benches, contentedly watching them. On every corner, and in between streets, the groups of people were talking, talking, talking! Ambulances and field hospital wagons, decorated with red flags and green boughs, and filled with crippled soldiers and Red Cross nurses, darted in from side streets and all hurried off in the same direction. Quite abruptly we turned a corner and skirted the edges of a pleasant park, with trees in full leaf, and a multitude of birds noisily chattering in the young spring green. Ivan in khaki, with Vera beside him in her best spring clothes, strolled along the winding paths, or sat contentedly munching sunflower seeds, and talking as volubly as the noisy sparrows up above. Peace, joy, exultation, was upon that spring-clad city. Freedom was young then, like the spring, like the leaves on the trees, like Vera and Ivan. Freedom was a butterfly upon a high bush, the sheen still upon her wings; and Vera and Ivan looked, rejoiced, and feared to touch--so new, so beautiful, so fragile. Poor Ivan! Poor Vera! They could not guess that afternoon, any more than I, what the months would do to their butterfly treasure. They could not know that they themselves would soon lay violent hands upon it, and the day would come when the broken wings would lie crushed like a blade of grass beneath a heavy boot. They could not know that Freedom must return in many other guises before she would be strong enough for Russia’s need.