self
at her feet, clasping her hand.] Oceana!

OCEANA. Freddy!

FREDDY. [Sobbing incoherently.] Oceana! I can't stand it!

OCEANA. Why... what's the matter?

FREDDY. I love you! I love you! I can't live without you! I can't give
you up... Oceana, have mercy on me!

OCEANA. [Gravely.] Freddy! This won't do! No... let go of me, please!
You must control yourself.

FREDDY. Don't send me away! How can you be so cruel to me?

OCEANA. But, Freddy, I have told you that I don't love you. [She stands,
thinking.] Give me my robe. Now, come sit down here, and listen to me.
I am going away, Freddy, and you won't see me any more. And that is
for the best... for you must get me out of your mind. I don't love you,
Freddy.

FREDDY. And you never would love me?

OCEANA. Never.

FREDDY. But why not... why not?

OCEANA. I can't tell you that.

FREDDY. Oh, you are pitiless to me!

OCEANA. One does not give love out of pity. That is a cowardly thing
to ask. [She pauses.] I must be frank with you, Freddy. You have got to
face the facts. When I give my love, it will be to a man; and you are
not a man.

FREDDY. But I am growing up!

OCEANA. No; you don't understand me. You should have grown up years ago.
You have been stunted. [She takes his hand.] Look! See the stains!

FREDDY. Why...

OCEANA. Cigarettes! And you want to be a man!

FREDDY. Is that so unforgivable?

OCEANA. It is only one thing of many, my dear cousin.

FREDDY. Oceana, you don't know what men are!

OCEANA. Oh, don't I! My dear boy, there is nothing about men that I
don't know. I have read Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis... I know it
all. I know it as a physician knows it. I can read a man's diseases in
his complexion... I can read his vices in his eyes. Don't you see?

FREDDY. [Drops his eyes.] I see!

OCEANA. Don't think that I am despising you, dear boy. I know the world
you have lived in.

FREDDY. But what can I do?

OCEANA. You can go away, and make a man of yourself. Go West, get out
into the open. Learn to ride and hunt... harden your muscles and expand
your chest. Until then you're not fit to be the father of any woman's
child!

FREDDY. Drop college, you mean?

OCEANA. Be your own college! The idea of trying to build a brain in a
body that's decaying! How could you stand it? Don't you ever feel that
you are boiling over... that you must have something upon which you can
wreak yourself? Don't you feel that you'd like to tame a horse,