Page:The Tsar's Window.djvu/94

 Walking along arm in arm seemed quite too much like good friends, I thought. "Then you do not belong to that class?" I persisted.

George turned his eyes on me coldly. There was a wrinkle between his brows which he often has when he talks with me. "I think we were getting on very well," he said, looking a little angry, "and that your desire to quarrel with me will be unsatisfied to-day."

"I assure you that nothing was farther from my thoughts than quarrelling with you," I responded, delighted to have vexed him, but rather ashamed of myself at the same time.

"Then let us talk no more about it."

His annoyance was only momentary, and I was quite silent until we reached the Anitchkine Palace, when I exclaimed abruptly, "It grows more of a mystery to me every day that Peter the Great should have selected this flat, marshy spot for a capital. Not a hill in sight, and everything built on piles!"

My companion laughed. "Is that the subject which has kept your thoughts busy during the last ten minutes? If you have read your guide-book, as all good travellers ought, you must have discovered why the great Tsar forced his people to come to this bleak corner of Russia."

"I have read 'Murray,' of course, but I found no such explanation."

"It is recorded that Peter the Great wished to have a window from which he could look out into Europe, therefore he founded St. Petersburg."