she lovingly at his feet._]

VERA [_Looking up at him_]
Then you _do_ care?

DAVID
What a question!

VERA
And you don't think wholly of your music and forget me?

DAVID
Why, you are behind all I write and play!

VERA [_With jealous passion_]
Behind? But I want to be before! I want you to love me first, before
everything.

DAVID
I do put you before everything.

VERA
You are sure? And nothing shall part us?

DAVID
Not all the seven seas could part you and me.

VERA
And you won't grow tired of me--not even when you are world-famous----?

DAVID [_A shade petulant_]
Sweetheart, considering I should owe it all to you----

VERA [_Drawing his head down to her breast_]
Oh, David! David! Don't be angry with poor little Vera if she doubts, if
she wants to feel quite sure. You see father has talked so terribly, and
after all I was brought up in the Greek Church, and we oughtn't to cause
all this suffering unless----

DAVID
Those who love us _must_ suffer, and _we_ must suffer in their
suffering. It is live things, not dead metals, that are being melted in
the Crucible.

VERA
Still, we ought to soften the suffering as much as----

DAVID
Yes, but only Time can heal it.

VERA [_With transition to happiness_]
But father seems half-reconciled already! Dear little father, if only he
were not so narrow about Holy Russia!

DAVID
If only _my_ folks were not so narrow about Holy Judea! But the ideals
of the fathers shall not be foisted on the children. Each generation
must live and die for its own dream.

VERA
Yes, David, yes. You are the prophet of the living present. I am so
happy.
[_She looks up wistfully._]
You are happy, too?

DAVID
I am dazed--I cannot realise that all our troubles have melted away--it
is so sudden.

VERA
You, David? Who always see everything in such rosy colours? Now that the
whole horizon is one great splendid rose, you almost seem as if gazing
out toward a blackness----

DAVID
We Jews are cheerful in gloom, mistrustful in joy. It is our tragic
history----

VERA
But you have come to end the tragic history; to throw off the coils of
the centuries.

DAVID [_Smiling again_]
Yes, yes, Vera. You bring back my sunnier self. I must be a pioneer on
the lost road of happiness. To-day shall be all joy, all lyric ecstasy.
[_He takes up his violin._]
Yes, I will make my old fiddle-strings _burst_ with joy!
[_He dashes into a jubilant tarantella. After a few bars th