VERA [_Who has been on pins and needles_] Mr. Quixano, what possible----? DAVID [_Entreatingly holds up a hand._] Miss Revendal! [_To QUINCY DAVENPORT_] Is this palace the same whose grounds were turned into Venetian canals where the guests ate in gondolas--gondolas that were draped with the most wonderful trailing silks in imitation of the Venetian nobility in the great water fêtes? QUINCY [_Turns to VERA_] Ah, Miss Revendal--what a pity you refused that invitation! It was a fairy scene of twinkling lights and delicious darkness--each couple had their own gondola to sup in, and their own side-canal to slip down. Eh? Ha! Ha! Ha! DAVID And the same night, women and children died of hunger in New York! QUINCY [_Startled, drops eyeglass._] Eh? DAVID [_Furiously_] And this is the sort of people you would invite to hear my symphony--these gondola-guzzlers! VERA Mr. Quixano! MENDEL David! DAVID These magnificent animals who went into the gondolas two by two, to feed and flirt! QUINCY [_Dazed_] Sir! DAVID I should be a new freak for you for a new freak evening--I and my dreams and my music! QUINCY You low-down, ungrateful---- DAVID Not for you and such as you have I sat here writing and dreaming; not for you who are killing my America! QUINCY _Your_ America, forsooth, you Jew-immigrant! VERA Mr. Davenport! DAVID Yes--Jew-immigrant! But a Jew who knows that your Pilgrim Fathers came straight out of his Old Testament, and that our Jew-immigrants are a greater factor in the glory of this great commonwealth than some of you sons of the soil. It is you, freak-fashionables, who are undoing the work of Washington and Lincoln, vulgarising your high heritage, and turning the last and noblest hope of humanity into a caricature. QUINCY [_Rocking with laughter_] Ha! Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! Ho! [_To VERA._] You never told me your Jew-scribbler was a socialist! DAVID I am nothing but a simple artist, but I come from Europe, one of her victims, and I know that she is a failure; that her palaces and peerages are outworn toys of the human spirit, and that the only hope of mankind lies in a new world. And here--in the land of to-morrow--you are trying to bring back Europe---- QUINCY [_Interjecting_] I wish we could!---- DAVID Europe with her comic-opera coronets and her worm-eaten stage decorations, and her pomp and chivalry built on a morass of crime and misery---- QUINCY [_With sneering laugh_] Morass! DAVID [_With prophetic passion_] But you shall not kill my dream! There shall come a fire round the Crucible that will melt you and your breed like wax in a blowpipe---- QUINCY [_Furiously, with clenched fist_] You---- DAVID America _shall_ make good...! PAPPELMEISTER [_Who has sat down and remained imperturbably seated throughout all this scene, springs up and waves his umbrella hysterically_] _Hoch Quixano! Hoch! Hoch! Es lebe Quixano! Hoch!_ QUINCY Poppy! You're dismissed!