AGNES: Lucas--Lucas dear, for some weeks...

AGNES: Lucas--Lucas dear, for some weeks, now, I’ve wanted to say this to you.

[LUCAS: What?]

AGNES: Don’t you think that such a union as ours would be much braver, much more truly courageous, if it could but be--be--

[LUCAS: If it could but be--what?]

AGNES: (Averting her eyes) Devoid of passion, if passion had no share in it.

[LUCAS: Surely this comes a little late, Agnes, between you and me.]

AGNES: (Leaning upon the back of a chair, staring before her and speaking in a low, steady voice) What has been was inevitable, I suppose. Still, we have hardly yet set foot upon the path we’ve agreed to follow. It is not too late for us, in our own lives, to pit the highest interpretation upon that word--Love. Think of the inner sustaining power it would give us! (More forcibly) We agree to go through the world together, preaching the lesson taught us by our experiences. We cry out to all people, “Look at us! Man and woman who are in the bondage of neither law nor ritual! Linked simply by mutual trust! Man and wife, but something better than man and wife! Friends, but even something better than friends!” I say there is that which is nobly, finely defiant, in the future we have mapped out for ourselves, if only--if only--

[LUCAS: Yes?]

AGNES: (Turning from him) If only it could be free from passion!

Pinero, Arthur Wing, The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, Oberon Books Ltd, 2014, pp. 67-68.