ALVA. The boy has what our age lacks: a hero-nature; therefore, of course, he is going to ruin. Do you remember how before sentence was passed he jumped out of the witness-box and yelled at the justice: "How do you know what would have become of you if you'd had to run around the cafes barefoot every night when you were ten years old?!" RODRIGO. If I could only have given him one in the jaw for that right away! Thank God, there are jails where scum like that gets some respect for the law pounded into them. ALVA. One like him might have been my model for my "World-conqueror." For twenty years literature has presented nothing but demi-men: men who can beget no children and women who can bear none. That's called "The Modern Problem." RODRIGO. I've ordered a hippopotamus-whip two inches thick. If that has no success with her, you can fill my cranium with potato-soup. Be it love or be it whipping, female flesh never inquires. Only give it some amusement, and it stays firm and fresh. She is now in her twentieth year, has been married three times and has satisfied a gigantic horde of lovers, and her heart's desires are at last pretty plain. But the man's got to have the seven deadly sins on his forehead, or she honors him not. If he looks as if a dog-catcher had spat him out on the street, then, with such women-folks, he needn't be afraid of a prince! I'll rent a garage fifty feet high and break her in there; and when she's learnt the first diving-leap without breaking her neck I'll pull on a black coat and not stir a finger the rest of my life. When she's educated practically it doesn't cost a woman half as much trouble to support her husband as the other way round, if only the man takes care of the mental labor for her, and doesn't let the sense of the family go to wreck. ALVA. I have learnt to rule humanity and drive it in harness before me like a well-broken four-in-hand,--but that boy sticks in my head. Really, I can still take private lessons in the scorn of the world from that school-boy! RODRIGO. She'll just comfortably let her hide be papered with thousand-mark bills! I'll extract salaries out of the directors with a centrifugal pump. I know their kind. When they don't need a man, let him shine their shoes for them; but when they must have an artiste they cut her down from the very gallows with their own hands and with the most entangling compliments. ALVA. In my situation there's nothing more in the world to fear--but death. In the realm of sensation I am the poorest beggar. But I can no longer scrape up the moral courage to exchange my established position for the excitements of the wild, adventurous life!