Oh, why cannot that day return? Why
cannot that day return?..."
He broke off and looked at me like a distracted child, his brows
puckered, his hands beating the air. I did not say anything. I wanted
him to forget that I was there.
He went on: "... I could not be there all day, I thought that I would go
on to the Duma. I flowed on with the crowd. We were a great river
swinging without knowing why, in one direction and only interrupted,
once and again, by the motor lorries that rattled along, the soldiers
shouting to us and waving their rifles, and we replying with cheers. I
heard no firing that morning at all. They said, in the crowd, that many
thousands had been killed last night. It seemed that on the roof of
nearly every house in Petrograd there was a policeman with a
machine-gun. But we marched along, without fear, singing. And all the
time the joy in my heart was rising, rising, and I was checking it,
telling myself that in a moment I would be disappointed, that I would
soon be tricked as I had been so often tricked before. But I couldn't
help my joy, which was stronger than myself....
"It must have been early afternoon, so long had I been on the road, when
I came at last to the Duma.
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