She played Johanna, a clumsy farm maiden sent chowderheaded by romantic thoughts. She fed the hogs with a clothespin on her nose, she fainted when she saw a weevil on her potatoes, she tried to dance on the lawn like Isadora Duncan, ending up tangled in the clothesline.

This caused chuckling that built as Johanna rolled back and forth on the ground, attempting to free herself gracefully, while the man she loved, a handyman, shook his head in disbelief. There were high, asthmatic gasps as she finally extricated herself, only to fall into the pigsty. The priest laughed so hard he dropped his candle, and it winked out cold.

Ironside rather lost track of the drama. He hadn’t slept, he needed to leave, and it was hard to think as his limbs went numb from standing upright.

Mary Pickford was praying. She clasped her hands to make a heart in the space between her thumbs and forefingers, asking the Almighty to send her a beau. A beau who could truly excite her. Her eyebrows shot north—a sound! What could it be? A bugle! The Lord sent her not a man, but a regiment!—the 143rd Artillery Brigade!—which, this moment of all moments, elected to train in the very pasture outside Mary’s window. The images of soldiers drilling, of Johanna reacting with enthusiasm to the cold and obvious propaganda, made Ironside nervous.

Mary found a handsome captain, played by Douglas MacLean. As he courted her with sweet nothings, her tender, flushed face regarding his with infinite joy, you could hear a pin drop.

Ironside, who had seen many things in his life, and who would live to see many more, had no words to describe this. He had a vision that carried with it no emotional weight whatever: the sun rising at the cradle of the Tigris and Euphrates, carrying with it the light, passing west, and currently, at this very moment, sending America into ascendance, with his own little kingdom drifting from its apogee.

He would find safe passage to Archangel for himself and the dead American. And soon he would oversee a withdrawal from Russia, an evacuation of troops, an end to the democratic ambition in this part of the world. But for now, he struggled to understand what he was beholding: dozens of silent, upturned faces awash in the glow of Mary Pickford’s youthful radiance. Her face was open to the camera, and there were no secrets there except how the happy flame of her soul so easily shone through her brilliant eyes. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

Mary sat in a swing with her suitor, who grinned at some empty point at the horizon, an arm around her shoulders.

In the audience, a bearded man cupped his thick palms and shouted, “Kisssszzz! Kissssszzz!” In English. It was a sound that made Ironside freeze in wonderment. “Kisssszzz!”