He looked at her in surprise. "What do you mean?"
"You're too good a man to hang on here in town," she said off-hand.
"Do you think I'm staying because I want to?" he burst out. "Good heavens, I'm mad to get away! I hate all this! I'm fighting myself every minute!"
She looked at him inscrutably. "My young friend, you're blind!"
"You don't understand," muttered Jack miserably.
"Don't I?" she said, wistful and smiling. "I've thought quite a lot about your case, but I wasn't sure that I had the right to speak."
"Oh, Kate!" he said turning to her quickly; "you know I'd take anything from you!"
She smiled at the way he put it. "I'm not going to abuse you. My advice to you is simply—to go!"
Jack stared at her.
"Go!" she repeated. "Ride away! Ride back to your own work in your own country, the place you suit, and that suits you. You'd never be any good here. Look at Linda in her finery! This is the breath of her nostrils. She has her eye on Montreal—London eventually. How could you two ever hope to pull together? Mind you, I'm her friend too, and I believe that I'm doing her a service in advising you to ride. Girls get carried away temporarily like men, though they're not supposed to. Girls often get hysterical, and write much more than they mean. Letter-writing between the sexes ought to be made a felony."