the sake of Science. I know those enthusiastic egomaniac gentry.
They vivisect you without blinking. I'm enough of a Forsyte to give them
the go-by, June."

"Dad," said June, "if you only knew how old-fashioned that sounds!
Nobody can afford to be half-hearted nowadays."

"I'm afraid," murmured Jolyon, with his smile, "that's the only natural
symptom with which Mr. Pondridge need not supply me. We are born to be
extreme or to be moderate, my dear; though, if you'll forgive my saying
so, half the people nowadays who believe they're extreme are really very
moderate. I'm getting on as well as I can expect, and I must leave it at
that."

June was silent, having experienced in her time the inexorable character
of her father's amiable obstinacy so far as his own freedom of action
was concerned.

How he came to let her know why Irene had taken Jon to Spain puzzled
Jolyon, for he had little confidence in her discretion. After she had
brooded on the news, it brought a rather sharp discussion, during which
he perceived to the full the fundamental opposition between her active
temperament and his wife's passivity. He even gathered that a little
soreness still remained from that generation-old struggle between them
over the body of Philip Bosinney, in which the passive had so signally
triumphed over the active principle.

According to June, it was foolish and even cowardly to hide the past
from Jon. Sheer opportunism, she called it.

"Which," Jolyon put in mildly, "is the working principle of real life,
my dear."

"Oh!" cried June, "you don't really defend her for not telling Jon, Dad.
If it were left to you, you would."

"I might, but simply because I know he must find out, which will be
worse than if we told him."

"Then why don't you tell him? It's just sleeping dogs again."

"My dear," said Jolyon, "I wouldn't for the world go against Irene's
instinct. He's her boy."

"Yours too," cried June.

"What is a man's instinct compared with a mother's?"

"Well, I think it's very weak of you."

"I dare say," said Jolyon, "I dare say."

And that was all she got from him; but the matter rankled in her brain.
She could not bear sleeping dogs. And there stirred in her a tortuous
impulse to push the matter toward decision. Jon ought to be told, so
that either his feeling might be nipped in the bud, or, flowering in
spite of the past, come to fruition. And she determined to see Fleur,
and judge for herself. When June dete