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 marriage 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."