ROBERT.
[With enthusiasm.] You, Richard! You are the incarnation of strength.
RICHARD.
[Holds out his hands.] Feel those hands.
ROBERT.
[Taking his hands.] Yes. Mine are stronger. But I meant strength of another kind.
RICHARD.
[Gloomily.] I think you would try to take her by violence.
[He withdraws his hands slowly.]
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?