ays friction, conflict, unwilling concessions.
Always! I don't believe there is any strong natural affection at all
between parents and growing-up children. There wasn't, I know, between
myself and my father. I didn't allow myself to see things as they were
in those days; now I do. I bored him. I hated him. I suppose that
shocks one's ideas.... It's true.... There are sentimental and
traditional deferences and reverences, I know, between father and
son; but that's just exactly what prevents the development of an easy
friendship. Father-worshipping sons are abnormal--and they're no good.
No good at all. One's got to be a better man than one's father, or what
is the good of successive generations? Life is rebellion, or nothing."

He rowed a stroke and watched the swirl of water from his oar broaden
and die away. At last he took up his thoughts again: "I wonder if, some
day, one won't need to rebel against customs and laws? If this discord
will have gone? Some day, perhaps--who knows?--the old won't coddle and
hamper the young, and the young won't need to fly in the faces of the
old. They'll face facts as facts, and understand. Oh, to face facts!
Gods! what a world it might be if people faced facts! Understanding!
Understanding! There is no other salvation. Some day older people,
perhaps, will trouble to understand younger people, and there won't
be these fierce disruptions; there won't be barriers one must defy or
perish.... That's really our choice now, defy--or futility.... The
world, perhaps, will be educated out of its idea of fixed standards....
I wonder, Ann Veronica, if, when our time comes, we shall be any
wiser?"

Ann Veronica watched a water-beetle fussing across the green depths.
"One can't tell. I'm a female thing at bottom. I like high tone for a
flourish and stars and ideas; but I want my things."

Part 2

Capes thought.

"It's odd--I have no doubt in my mind that what we are doing is wrong,"
he said. "And yet I do it without compunction."

"I never felt so absolutely right," said Ann Veronica.

"You ARE a female thing at bottom," he admitted. "I'm not nearly so sure
as you. As for me, I look twice at it.... Life is two things,
that's how I see it; two things mixed and muddled up together. Life is
morality--life is adventure. Squire and master. Adventure rules, and
morality--looks up the trains in the Bradshaw. Morality tells you what
is right, and adventure moves you. If morality means anythin