rriage laws are just as they were when Soames and
Irene couldn't get a divorce, and you had to come in. We've moved, and
they haven't. So nobody cares. Marriage without a decent chance of
relief is only a sort of slave-owning; people oughtn't to own each
other. Everybody sees that now. If Irene broke such laws, what does it
matter?"

"It's not for me to disagree there," said Jolyon; "but that's all quite
beside the mark. This is a matter of human feeling."

"Of course, it is," cried June, "the human feeling of those two young
things."

"My dear," said Jolyon with gentle exasperation, "you're talking
nonsense."

"I'm not. If they prove to be really fond of each other, why should
they be made unhappy because of the past?"

"YOU haven't lived that past. I have--through the feelings of my wife;
through my own nerves and my imagination, as only one who is devoted
can."

June, too, rose, and began to wander restlessly.

"If," she said suddenly, "she were the daughter of Phil Bosinney, I
could understand you better. Irene loved him, she never loved Soames."

Jolyon uttered a deep sound--the sort of noise an Italian peasant woman
utters to her mule. His heart had begun beating furiously, but he paid
no attention to it, quite carried away by his feelings.

"That shows how little you understand. Neither I nor Jon, if I know
him, would mind a love-past. It's the brutality of a union without
love. This girl is the daughter of the man who once owned Jon's mother
as a negro-slave was owned. You can't lay that ghost; don't try to,
June! It's asking us to see Jon joined to the flesh and blood of the
man who possessed Jon's mother against her will. It's no good mincing
words; I want it clear once for all. And now I mustn't talk any more,
or I shall have to sit up with this all night." And, putting his hand
over his heart, Jolyon turned his back on his daughter and stood
looking at the river Thames.

June, who by nature never saw a hornets' nest until she had put her
head into it, was seriously alarmed. She came and slipped her arm
through his. Not convinced that he was right, and she herself wrong,
because that was not natural to her, she was yet profoundly impressed
by the obvious fact that the subject was very bad for him. She rubbed
her cheek against his shoulder, and said nothing.

After taking her elderly cousin across, Fleur did not land at once, but
pulled in among the reeds, into the sunshine. The peaceful beauty o