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 .
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