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.