But how, then, could he ask such a question?
"You've had your holiday," Ayre went on calmly, "and a precious bad use you've made of it.

Why not go back to work now ?" "As if nothing had happened ?" This was the very suggestion he had made to himself, and scornfully rejected.
"You think you're utterly smashed, of course--I know what a facer it can be--and you're just the man to take it very hard.

Stafford, I'm sorry." And with a sudden impulse he held out his hand.
Stafford grasped it.

The sympathy almost broke him down.

"She is all the world to me," he said.
"Aye, but be a man.