one o'clock
They pause and draw a deep breath , as if in the presence of something supernatural . They rode on without speaking through the squalid town -- the whilom rival and the victim of brilliant Moscow . They rode straight to the station , where they dined in , by the way , one of the best railway refreshment rooms in the world . At one o'clock the night express from Moscow to St. Petersburg , with its huge American locomotive , rumbled into the station . Paul secured a chair in the long saloon car , and then returned to the platform . The train waited twenty minutes for refreshments , and he still had much to say to Steinmetz ; for one of these men owned a principality and the other governed it . They walked up and down the long platform , smoking endless cigarettes , talking gravely .