“Just,” replied Jolyon, puffing the mild cigarette to which he was reduced, “as Mr. Paul Post puts his art, eh?  Art for Art’s sake —­Science for 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 determined on anything, delicacy became a somewhat minor consideration.  After all, she was Soames’ cousin, and they were both interested in pictures.  She would go and tell him that he ought to buy a Paul Post, or