t I shouldn't tell your father that you're coming."

The girl nodded.

Watching her scull the skiff across, June thought: 'She's awfully
pretty and well made. I never thought Soames would have a daughter as
pretty as this. She and Jon would make a lovely couple.'

The instinct to couple, starved within herself, was always at work in
June. She stood watching Fleur row back; the girl took her hand off a
scull to wave farewell; and June walked languidly on between the
meadows and the river, with an ache in her heart. Youth to youth, like
the dragon-flies chasing each other, and love like the sun warming them
through and through. Her youth! So long ago--when Phil and she--! And
since? Nothing--no one had been quite what she had wanted. And so she
had missed it all. But what a coil was round those two young things, if
they really were in love, as Holly would have it--as her father, and
Irene, and Soames himself seemed to dread. What a coil, and what a
barrier! And the itch for the future, the contempt, as it were, for
what was overpast, which forms the active principle, moved in the heart
of one who ever believed that what one wanted was more important than
what other people did not want. From the bank, awhile, in the warm
summer stillness, she watched the water-lily plants and willow leaves,
the fishes rising; sniffed the scent of grass and meadow-sweet,
wondering how she could force everybody to be happy. Jon and Fleur! Two
little lame ducks--charming callow yellow little ducks! A great pity!
Surely something could be done! One must not take such situations lying
down. She walked on, and reached a station, hot and cross.

That evening, faithful to the impulse towards direct action, which made
many people avoid her, she said to her father:

"Dad, I've been down to see young Fleur. I think she's very attractive.
It's no good hiding our heads under our wings, is it?"

The startled Jolyon set down his barley water, and began crumbling his
bread.

"It's what you appear to be doing," he said: "Do you realise whose
daughter she is?"

"Can't the dead past bury its dead?"

Jolyon rose.

"Certain things can never be buried."

"I disagree," said June. "It's that which stands in the way of all
happiness and progress. You don't understand the Age, Dad. It's got no
use for outgrown things. Why do you think it matters so terribly that
Jon should know about his mother? Who pays any attention to that sort
of thing now? The ma