A desperado’s remorse cannot be trusted as genuine

Evidence

The canyon was glorious, ah! glorious beyond any other, but it was a dismal and depressing ride. The dead past buried its dead. Not an allusion was made to the conversation previously. “Jim’s” manner was courteous, but freezing, and when I left home on my return he said he hardly thought he should be back from the Snowy Range before I left. Essentially an actor, was he, I wonder, posing on the previous day in the attitude of desperate remorse, to impose on my credulity or frighten me; or was it a genuine and unpremeditated outburst of passionate regret for the life which he had thrown away? I cannot tell, but I think it was the last. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 488

Categorization

• QUESTION: Bird never resolves whether Jim’s violent confession was performance or genuine; the ambiguity lingers unexamined.