CHAPTER XV
The Winter Palace
THE next day Nona found opportunity for confiding to Mildred the fate of Sonya Valesky. She found Mildred more deeply concerned than Barbara had been. This was true because Mildred had a different nature; it was easier for her to understand a temperament that would sacrifice everything to its dream, than for the more practical and sensible Barbara. Moreover, Barbara was so much in love these days that she found it difficult to give a great deal of thought to other people. She struggled against the tendency, but it is ever the vice of lovers.
Finally, on Thursday, Mildred Thornton received a note from General Alexis inviting her and her two friends to come that afternoon at four o’clock to the Winter Palace. And although the three girls were Americans, they understood that such an invitation was not in reality an invitation, but a command. For the Czar and Czarina had announced that they would be pleased to meet the three American Red Cross nurses.
The meeting was to be informal, as these were war times and there were no court levees. Indeed, the Czar was only staying for a brief time at his palace before going to take command of his own troops. Owing to the frequent Russian defeats in the past few months, the Czar had concluded that he must command his men in person in order to give them greater courage and steadfastness. The munitions of war, of which they had been sadly in need for several months, were now pouring in from Japan and the United States.
Of course, in the excitement and nervousness due to such an important and unexpected occasion, the three Red Cross girls had the same problem to settle that attacks all women at critical moments:
“What on earth should they wear to the presentation?”
Fortunately, under the circumstances there was but one answer to this question. They were invited to the Palace as Red Cross nurses, they must therefore wear their Red Cross uniforms. Since the three girls had almost nothing else left in their wardrobes, this was just as well. Constant moving from place to place, with little opportunity for transportation, had reduced their luggage to the most limited amounts.
Yet assuredly they were as handsome and far more dignified on the afternoon of their appearance at the Winter Palace in the costumes of American Red Cross nurses, than if they had been appareled in the court trains and feathers of more gala occasions.
Mildred always looked especially well in her uniform. She was less pretty than the other two girls. But for this very reason her dignity and the sense of serenity that her personality suggested showed to best advantage in the simple toilette of white with the Red Cross insignia on the arm. However, over her uniform Mildred wore the magnificent sable coat in which she had appeared at her friends’ lodgings in Petrograd.