"My home--my home is
here."

After a while the mood of depression, recurrent moments of which had
come to him in New York with diminishing frequency, passed into one of
contemplation, of calm, like those which had followed his nights of
passion on the Dnieper, and at last he closed his eyes and dozed.
Visions of courts and camps passed through his mind--of brilliant
uniforms and jeweled decorations; of spacious polished halls,
resplendent with ornate mirrors and crystal pendant chandeliers; of
diamond coronets, of silks and satins and powdered flunkies. And then
other visions of gray figures crouched in the mud; of rain coming out of
the dark and of ominous lights over the profile of low hills; of
shrieks; of shells and cries of terror; of his cousin, a tall, bearded
man on a horse in a ravine waving an imperious arm; of confusion and
moving thousands, the creak of sanitars, the groans of men calling upon
mothers they would never see. And then with a leap backward over the
years, the vision of a small man huddled against the wall of a courtyard
being knouted until red stains appeared on his gray blouse and then
mingled faintly in the mist and the rain until the small man sank to the
full length of his imprisoned arms like one crucified....

Peter Nichols straightened and passed a hand across his damp forehead.
Through the perspective of this modern civilization what had been
passing before his vision seemed very vague, very distant, but he knew
that it was not a dream....

All about him was life, progress, industry, hope--a nation in the
making, proud of her brief history which had been built around an ideal.
If he could bring this same ideal back to Russia! In his heart he
thanked God for America--imperfect though she was, and made a vow that
in the task he had set for himself he should not be found wanting.

Twice he changed trains, the second time at a small junction amid an
ugliness of clay-pits and brickyards and dust and heat. There were
perhaps twenty people on the platform. He walked the length of the
station and as he did so a man in a gray suit disappeared around the
corner of the building. But Peter Nichols did not see him, and in a
moment, seated in his new train in a wooden car which reminded him of
some of the ancient rolling stock of the St. Petersburg and Moscow
Railroad, he was taken haltingly and noisily along the last stage of his
journey.

But he was aware of the familiar odor of the pine bals