“In many ways, yes.”
“Should you care to change hosts?”
“In that respect I find you pretty equal.”
“I am going to the city this morning, would you care to come with me?”
For one minute I looked at him, then I answered,—
“I care very little about anything. If I must go, I must. If not I would rather stay.”
He smiled.
“You are altering,” he said, “altering in mind and spirit. Gradually you will alter altogether, so that none of your past acquaintances will know you. But there! I forgot, you have no past acquaintances. It was you, if I remember rightly, who tried to push your own identity upon someone else, someone very much outside your own station, who could only regard you in the light of an impudent beggar fit simply for spurning aside without remark.”
He laughed. “Like most ignorant people,” he continued, “you have great conceit and assurance and stubbornness, which you mistake for true determination. And when all these things fail to assist you, you turn sullen and think yourself ill-used.”
“This is very interesting,” I retorted. “I am learning facts about myself hitherto unknown. Is it sullenness from which I suffer just at present?”