ROBERT. [_Rapidly._] Those are moments of sheer madness when we feel an intense passion for a woman. We see nothing. We think of nothing. Only to possess her. Call it brutal, bestial, what you will. RICHARD. [_A little timidly._] I am afraid that that longing to possess a woman is not love. ROBERT. [_Impatiently._] No man ever yet lived on this earth who did not long to possess—I mean to possess in the flesh—the woman whom he loves. It is nature’s law. RICHARD. [_Contemptuously._] What is that to me? Did I vote it? ROBERT. But if you love... What else is it? RICHARD. [_Hesitatingly._] To wish her well. ROBERT. [_Warmly._] But the passion which burns us night and day to possess her. You feel it as I do. And it is not what you said now. RICHARD. Have you...? [_He stops for an instance._] Have you the luminous certitude that yours is the brain in contact with which she must think and understand and that yours is the body in contact with which her body must feel? Have you this certitude in yourself? ROBERT. Have you? RICHARD. [_Moved._] Once I had it, Robert: a certitude as luminous as that of my own existence—or an illusion as luminous. ROBERT. [_Cautiously._] And now? RICHARD. If you had it and I could feel that you had it—even now... ROBERT. What would you do? RICHARD. [_Quietly._] Go away. You, and not I, would be necessary to her. Alone as I was before I met her. ROBERT. [_Rubs his hands nervously._] A nice little load on my conscience! RICHARD. [_Abstractedly._] You met my son when you came to my house this afternoon. He told me. What did you feel? ROBERT. [_Promptly._] Pleasure. RICHARD. Nothing else? ROBERT. Nothing else. Unless I thought of two things at the same time. I am like that. If my best friend lay in his coffin and his face had a comic expression I should smile. [_With a little gesture of despair._] I am like that. But I should suffer too, deeply. RICHARD. You spoke of conscience... Did he seem to you a child only—or an angel? ROBERT. [_Shakes his head._] No. Neither an angel nor an Anglo-Saxon. Two things, by the way, for which I have very little sympathy. RICHARD. Never then? Never even... with her? Tell me. I wish to know. ROBERT. I feel in my heart something different. I believe that on the last day (if it ever comes), when we are all assembled together, that the Almighty will speak to us like this. We will say that we lived chastely with one other creature... RICHARD. [_Bitterly._] Lie to Him? ROBERT. Or that we tried to. And He will say to us: Fools! Who told you that you were to give yourselves to one being only? You were made to give yourselves to many freely. I wrote that law with My finger on your hearts. RICHARD. On woman’s heart, too? ROBERT. Yes. Can we close our heart against an affection which we feel deeply? Should we close it? Should she? RICHARD. We are speaking of bodily union.