“I suppose, then, my fortune is known to you?”

“Yes; I wish I had seen you before you went.  Do you mind my interfering?”

“No, not now.  You could have done no good before.”

“I could have told you it was no use.”

“I shouldn’t have believed you.”

“I suppose you were bound to try it for yourself.  Now, you think I don’t understand your feelings.”

“I suppose most people think they know how a man feels when he’s crossed in love,” said Stafford, trying to speak lightly.

“That’s not the only thing with you.”

“No, it isn’t,” he replied, a little surprised.

“I feel rather responsible for it all, you know.  I was at the bottom of Morewood’s showing you that picture.”

“It must have dawned on me sooner of later.”

“I don’t know.  But, yes—­I expect so.  You’re hard hit.”

Stafford smiled.

“Hard hit about her; and harder hit because it was a plunge to go into it at all.”

“You’re quite right.”

“Of course I can’t go into that side of it very much, but I think I know more or less how you feel.”

“I really think you do.  It surprises me.”

“Yes.  But, Stafford, may I go on taking liberties?”

“I believe you are my friend.  Let us put that sort of question out of the way.  Why have you come?”

“What does he mean by saying he’s uneasy about you?”

“It’s the old fellow’s love for me.”

Ayre was silent for a moment.  Then he asked abruptly: 

“What are you going to do?”

“I have hardly had time to look round yet.”

“Why should it make any difference to you?”

Stafford was puzzled.  He thought Ayre had really recognized the state of his mind.  He was inclined to think so still.  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.  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.”