] Henry!
OCEANA. Ah, yes! That is safer!
HENRY. [Supports LETITIA.] My dear! My dear!
LETITIA. Come home with me!
OCEANA. God, man, how I pity you! Bound in chains to a woman like
that! And with all the world conspiring to hold you fast! How can you
bear it? Do you expect to bear it forever? What will become of your
soul? Oh, I pity you! I pity you!
LETITIA. [Hysterically.] Henry, take me home! Take me home at once!
HENRY. Yes, my dear, yes!
OCEANA. What is the spell they've laid upon you? You make me think of
Gulliver . . . a giant stretched out upon the ground, impotent, bound
fast with a million tiny threads! Wake up, man . . . wake up! You've
only one life to live. You act as if you had a thousand.
LETITIA. Mother!
MRS. MASTERSON. How long is this to continue?
LETITIA. Henry, won't you stop listening to her?
OCEANA. He's not listening to me, Letitia. He's listening to the voice
of the universe, calling to him. The voice of unborn generations,
clamoring, agonizing! What do you suppose it means, man . . . this
storm that has shaken us? It is Nature's trumpet-call . . . it is the
shout of discovery of the powers within us! For ages upon ages life
has been preparing it . . . and now suddenly we meet . . . the
barriers are shattered and flung down, the tides of being sweep us
together!
MRS. MASTERSON. Oh! This is outrageous!
DR. MASTERSON. Oceana, Henry is married!
OCEANA. Married! Married! That is the sorcery with which you bind him!
No longer a man at all, but some aborted thing .
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