DAVID [_Relapsing into boyish shyness_] No, if you please, don't ask---- [_He moves over to his desk and nervously shuts it down and turns the keys of drawers as though protecting his MS._] VERA Won't you give a bit of it at our Concert? DAVID Oh, it needs an orchestra. VERA But you at the violin and I at the piano---- MENDEL You didn't tell me you played, Miss Revendal! VERA I told you less commonplace things. DAVID Miss Revendal plays quite like a professional. VERA [_Smiling_] I don't feel so complimented as you expect. You see I did have a professional training. MENDEL [_Smiling_] And I thought you came to _me_ for lessons! [_DAVID laughs._] VERA [_Smiling_] No, I went to Petersburg---- DAVID [_Dazed_] To Petersburg----? VERA [_Smiling_] Naturally. To the Conservatoire. There wasn't much music to be had at Kishineff, a town where---- DAVID Kishineff! [_He begins to tremble._] VERA [_Still smiling_] My birthplace. MENDEL [_Coming toward him, protectingly_] Calm yourself, David. DAVID Yes, yes--so you are a Russian! [_He shudders violently, staggers._] VERA [_Alarmed_] You are ill! DAVID It is nothing, I--not much music at Kishineff! No, only the Death-March!... Mother! Father! Ah--cowards, murderers! And you! [_He shakes his fist at the air._] You, looking on with your cold butcher's face! O God! O God! [_He bursts into hysterical sobs and runs, shamefacedly, through the door to his room._] VERA [_Wildly_] What have I said? What have I done? MENDEL Oh, I was afraid of this, I was afraid of this. FRAU QUIXANO [_Who has fallen asleep over her book, wakes as if with a sense of the horror and gazes dazedly around, adding to the thrillingness of the moment_] _Dovidel! Wu is' Dovidel! Mir dacht sach_---- MENDEL [_Pressing her back to her slumbers_] _Du träumst, Mutter! Schlaf!_ [_She sinks back to sleep._] VERA [_In hoarse whisper_] His father and mother were massacred? MENDEL [_In same tense tone_] Before his eyes--father, mother, sisters, down to the youngest babe, whose skull was battered in by a hooligan's heel. VERA How did _he_ escape? MENDEL He was shot in the shoulder, and fell unconscious. As he wasn't a girl, the hooligans left him for dead and hurried to fresh sport. VERA Terrible! Terrible! [_Almost in tears._] MENDEL [_Shrugging shoulders, hopelessly_] It is only Jewish history!... David belongs to the species of _pogrom_ orphan--they arrive in the States by almost every ship. VERA Poor boy! Poor boy! And he looked so happy! [_She half sobs._] MENDEL So he is, most of the time--a sunbeam took human shape when he was born. But naturally that dreadful scene left a scar on his brain, as the bullet left a scar on his shoulder, and he is always liable to see red when Kishineff is mentioned. VERA I will never mention my miserable birthplace to him again.