VERA [_Turns, speaks with grave dignity_] Miss Andrews has charged me to convey to you the heart-felt thanks and congratulations of the Settlement.
DAVID [_Frozen_] Miss Andrews is very kind.... I trust you are well.
VERA Thank you, Mr. Quixano. Very well and very busy. So you'll excuse me. [_She turns to go._]
VERA [_Turns her head_] They are gone back to Russia. And yours?
VERA [_Confused_] Yes--yes--of course--I forgot! Good-bye, Mr. Quixano.
DAVID Good-bye, Miss Revendal. [_He drops back on the chair. VERA walks to the elevator, then just before ringing turns again._]
VERA I shouldn't advise you to sit here in the damp.
DAVID My uncle dried the chair. [_Bitterly_] Curious how every one is concerned about my body and no one about my soul.
VERA Because your soul is so much stronger than your body. Why, think! It has just lifted a thousand people far higher than this roof-garden.
DAVID Please don't you congratulate me, too! That would be too ironical.
VERA [_Agitated, coming nearer_] Irony, Mr. Quixano? Please, please, do not imagine there is any irony in my congratulations.
DAVID The irony is in all the congratulations. How can I endure them when I know what a terrible failure I have made!
VERA Failure! Because the critics are all divided? That is the surest proof of success. You have produced something real and new.
DAVID I am not thinking of Pappelmeister's connoisseurs--_I_ am the only connoisseur, the only one who knows. And every bar of my music cried "Failure! Failure!" It shrieked from the violins, blared from the trombones, thundered from the drums. It was written on all the faces----
VERA [_Vehemently, coming still nearer_] Oh, no! no! I watched the faces--those faces of toil and sorrow, those faces from many lands. They were fired by your vision of their coming brotherhood, lulled by your dream of their land of rest. And I could see that you were right in speaking to the people. In some strange, beautiful, way the inner meaning of your music stole into all those simple souls----
DAVID [_Springing up_] And _my_ soul? What of _my_ soul? False to its own music, its own mission, its own dream. That is what I mean by failure, Vera. I preached of God's Crucible, this great new continent that could melt up all race-differences and vendettas, that could purge and re-create, and God tried me with his supremest test. He gave me a heritage from the Old World, hate and vengeance and blood, and said, "Cast it all into my Crucible." And I said, "Even thy Crucible cannot melt this hate, cannot drink up this blood." And so I sat crooning over the dead past, gloating over the old blood-stains--I, the apostle of America, the prophet of the God of our children. Oh--how my music mocked me! And you--so fearless, so high above fate--how you must despise me!