Richard
[Toying with the lounge cushion.] Do you kiss everything that is beautiful for you?
Robert
Everything—if it can be kissed. [He takes up a flat stone which lies on the table.] This stone, for instance. It is so cool, so polished, so delicate, like a woman's temple. It is silent, it suffers our passion; and it is beautiful. [He places it against his lips.] And so I kiss it because it is beautiful. And what is a woman? A work of nature, too, like a stone or a flower or a bird. A kiss is an act of homage.
Richard
It is an act of union between man and woman. Even if we are often led to desire through the sense of beauty can you say that the beautiful is what we desire?
Robert
[Pressing the stone to his forehead.] You will give me a headache if you make me think today. I cannot think today. I feel too natural, too common. After all, what is most attractive in even the most beautiful woman?
Richard
What?
Robert
Not those qualities which she has and other women have not but the qualities which she has in common with them. I mean . . . the commonest. [Turning over the stone, he presses the other side to his forehead.] I mean how her body develops heat when it is pressed, the movement of her blood, how quickly she changes by digestion what she eats into—what shall be nameless.
