"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. You have your work to do."
"No, I have no work to do. I threw all that away."
"I expected you'd say that."
"I know, of course, what you think of it. In your view, that vow of mine was nonsense—a part of the high-falutin' way I took everything in. Isn't that so?"
"I didn't come here to try and persuade you to think as I do about such things. I am not so fond of my position that I need proselytize. But I want you to look into yours."
"Mine is only too clear. I have given up everything and got nothing. It's this way: all the heart is out of me. If I went back to my work I should be a sham."
"I don't see that. May I smoke?"