uld 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!

VERA
I? Ah no!

DAVID
You must. You do. Your words still sting. Were it seven seas between
us, you said, our love must cross them. And I--I who had prated of seven
seas----

VERA
Not seas of blood--I spoke selfishly, thoughtlessly. I had not realised
that crimson flood. Now I see it day and night. O God!
[_She shudders and covers her eyes._]

DAVID
There lies my failure--to have brought it to your eyes, instead of
blotting it from my own.

VERA
No man could have blotted it out.

DAVID
Yes--by faith in the Crucible. From the blood of battlefields spring
daisies and b