But I do ask you to believe that I have them, that they are real, and that my being what you termed ambitionless and a country loafer is not my condition from choice.

It is my right to insist upon your believing that.

Do you believe it ?" At last I had made an impression.

My earnestness seemed to have shaken her contemptuous indifference.

She looked at me steadily, frowning a little, but regarding me less as if I were a clod and more and more as if I were the puzzle she had once declared me to be.