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, or to
sail a boat in a storm? Don't you ever read about adventures?
FREDDY. Yes, I read about them.
OCEANA. And don't you ever feel that you must experience them? That you
must face some kind of danger... do something that you can look back
on with pride? Why, see... six years ago there came to our island three
war-canoes full of savages... cannibals they were. If father and I
hadn't been there, they'd have wiped our people out. And do you think
I'd give up the memory of that struggle?
FREDDY. What happened?
OCEANA. Fortunately they came in the daytime, so we soon drove them back
to their boats. See... I'll show you. [She goes to trunk.] Here's one of
them.
[She lifts up a human skull.]
FREDDY. Good Lord!
OCEANA. Notice that crack. That was done with a spear... by my prince,
the one who made me this robe, you know. He cleaned the skull out for
me.
FREDDY. Rather a ghastly sort of souvenir.
OCEANA. Oh, I don't mind that. Father and I found it useful... a sort of
memento mori.
FREDDY. [Looking into trunk.] And what are those things?
OCEANA. They are some of my arrows. And these are what we used for
bowls... turtle-shells, you see.
FREDDY. [Pointing.] But those?
OCEANA. Oh, my single-sticks. [Lifts them.] That's the game Henry and I
were talking about. You ought to get him to teach it to you.
FREDDY. What's it like?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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