id is a musician of genius, and some day----

BARONESS
A fiddler in a beer-hall! She prefers a fiddler to a millionaire of ze
first families of America!

VERA [_Contemptuously_]
First families! I told you David's family came to Poland in 1492--some
months before America was discovered.

BARON
Christ save us! You have become a Jewess!

VERA
No more than David has become a Christian. We were already at one--all
honest people are. Surely, father, all religions must serve the same
God--since there is only one God to serve.

BARONESS
But ze girl is an ateist!

BARON
Silence, Katusha! Leave me to deal with my daughter.
[_Changing tone to pathos, taking her face between his hands_]

Oh, Vera, _Verotschka_, my dearest darling, I had sooner you had
remained buried in Siberia than that----
[_He breaks down._]

VERA [_Touched, sitting beside him_]
For you, father, I _was_ as though buried in Siberia. Why did you come
here to stab yourself afresh?

BARON
I wish to God I had come here earlier. I wish I had not been so nervous
of Russian spies. Ah, _Verotschka_, if you only knew how I have pored
over the newspaper pictures of you, and the reports of your life in this
Settlement!

VERA
You asked me not to send letters.

BARON
I know, I know--and yet sometimes I felt as if I could risk Siberia
myself to read your dear, dainty handwriting again.

VERA [_Still more softened_]
Father, if you love me so much, surely you will love David a little
too--for my sake.

BARON [_Dazed_]
I--love--a Jew? Impossible.
[_He shudders._]

VERA [_Moving away, icily_]
Then so is any love from me to you. You have chosen to come back into my
life, and after our years of pain and separation I would gladly remember
only my old childish affection. But not if you hate David. You must make
your choice.

BARON [_Pitifully_]
Choice? I have no choice. Can I carry mountains? No more can I love a
Jew.
[_He rises resolutely._]

BARONESS [_Who has turned away, fretting and fuming, turns back to her
husband, clapping her hands_]
Bravo!

VERA [_Going to him again, coaxingly_]
I don't ask you to carry mountains, but to drop the mountains you
carry--the mountains of prejudice. Wait till you see him.

BARON
I will not see him.

VERA
Then you will hear him--he is going to make music for all the world. You
can't escape him, _papasha_, you with your love of music, any more than
you escaped Rubinstein.

BARONES