“Wait,” I said again. “Listen to me.”
She seemed to hesitate and then turned her head.
“I am listening,” she said. “What is it?”
“You have no right to disbelieve me.”
“I disbelieve you? Why should you think I disbelieve you? I am not sufficiently interested to believe or disbelieve, I assure you.”
“But you do. You judge me—”
“I judge you! You flatter yourself, Mr. Paine.”
“But you do. You apologized just now for judging me without a hearing the other day. You acknowledged that you should not have done it. You are doing the same thing now.”
“I apologized for presuming to offer advice to a stranger. I did not apologize for the advice itself. I think it good. I do not care to argue the matter further.”
“You are not asked to argue. But your sneer at my reasons proves that you believe that I have none and am merely trying to justify myself with trumped up and lying excuses. You are wrong, and since you presumed to judge me then you must listen to me now. I have—or had—reasons for living as I have done, for being the idler and good-for-nothing you believe me to be. I can't tell you what they are; I can tell no one. 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?”