In the antechamber a gray-bloused attendant helps you off with wraps and goloshes, then silently disappears through a rear door, leaving you standing there unannounced. The vestibule is cumbered with coats and hats on the wall-hooks, overshoes helter-skelter on the floor, and canes and umbrellas in the corner. It is like a clothing establishment. Beyond the curtained doorway on the right are lights, and the sound of the piano is louder. This seems the most promising direction for exploration, so--forward! Beyond the portières is a splendidly lofty room, like that of an Italian palace, brilliantly lighted with electricity. Many-paned windows run high up, starting from the level of one’s breast, and long heavy hangings half-conceal them. To the right of the door is a mahogany grand piano, at which, oblivious of the world, the host is diligently thumping away at _Partant pour la Syrie!_ with inadvertent variations, singing carelessly as he plays. Beyond him, in an imposing armchair of German oak, like King Edward’s throne in the Abbey, is a lady, propped with many cushions. She is slender and darkly clad, and is conversing with a young man in uniform, who sits very straight on a dainty gilt chair of the Louis XVI epoch. A low lacquered table before them is gayly painted with geisha girls and eaved pagodas. It holds a massive brass samovar encircled by a row of beautifully colored tea-tumblers of the sort that one sees on exhibition in the glass-factories which front the Grand Canal at Venice. The chorus comes from the banker at the piano:-- Amour à la plus belle; Honneur au plus vaillant. [Illustration: THE ICE-BREAKER, YERMAK--LAKE BAIKAL] There is no use of paltering and waiting to be announced, so we enter the room. The performer hears the steps on the polished floor and swings round on the stool. “Ah, voilà!” he says, and rises to introduce you to his wife. “A moi le plaisir,” she says, smiling. “Mon frère, Ivan Semyonevich,” presenting you next to the young officer, who rises abruptly and clicks his heels as he takes your hand. You are motioned to a replica of the little chair, and your host returns to his piano, this time to play with immense satisfaction in your honor a hazy memory of some bygone variety show: “There’ll be a hot time in the old town to-night.” “A friend is very welcome,” says Madame Karetnikov, when he finishes. “We do not see many from the world here in Siberia.” “The life, however, is interesting, is it not?” “O monsieur, I, too, was interested at first, but there are so few people of the world here, and we see them all the time. C’est affreux! I give you a month to change that opinion.” “You give a month, Irina; I give a week,” growls her brother. “If it were not that we get away during the spring one would perish of ennui,” the hostess adds. “But Japan is not far. We go there or to Europe every year. Perhaps soon we shall get a transfer to another branch.”