ckly! Please!

[He goes out, right, with Letitia; Oceana stands gazing straight ahead.
Sound of sleigh-bells heard. Suddenly she sinks into a chair, bows her
head upon the table, and bursts into tears.]

ETHEL. [Opens door, left, and stands gazing at Oceana in alarm, then
runs to her and sinks upon her knees before her.] Oceana!

OCEANA. [Sobbing.] He's gone! Gone!

ETHEL. He left you?

OCEANA. I gave him up! I sent him away. Oh, Ethel, Ethel... what am I
going to do?

ETHEL. Oceana!

OCEANA. Oh, how I loved him! I didn't realize how I loved him! The whole
face of the world was changed... and now, now... how shall I bear it?
[She stares ahead of her.] Oh, Ethel, tell me I did right to give him
up.

ETHEL. Why did you do it?

OCEANA. I saw he loved her, and I had to give him up. It would have been
to tear his soul in half! But now that he's gone, I don't see how I
can bear it! [A pause; she is lost in thought; she whispers with great
intensity.] There is a vision... it haunts me... it cries out in me in a
voice of agony!

ETHEL. What?

OCEANA. A little child! You have no idea... how real it was to me! It
fell out of the skies upon me! The thought never left me. I heard its
voice... its laughter; I saw its smile. It called to me all day, and it
played with me in my dreams; I felt its little hands upon me... its lips
upon my breast. And it's gone!

ETHEL. Your child!

OCEANA. And his! And think... think of the awfulness of it... it was
hovering at the gates of life! It wanted to be! And I trembled.. . I
suffered; at any moment I might have said the word, and it would have
come. But I did not say the word... and it is gone. And now it will
never come! Never... never! I have murdered the child! My child!

ETHEL. No, no, Oceana!

OCEANA. God! I can't understand it! What does it mean? Did it exist when
I thought of it? Does it exist now? Who can tell me?

ETHEL. I don't know, Oceana.

OCEANA. The strangeness of it! Sometimes my whole being rises up in
revolt... I could tear the skies apart, to wrest the secret from them!
You see, we don't know anything. We don't know what's right, we don't
know what's wrong. We're in a trap! [She rises suddenly.] No, no, I
mustn't talk that way. I've lost my self-control. I let myself go, and
I had no right to. Now, what shall I do? Wait, dear... let me think, let
me think calmly. [Stares about her.] I want to remember what father said
to me; what I promised to do. See,