A hardened outlaw’s tears under mountain starlight made her question his sincerity

Evidence

“Jim,” or Mr. Nugent, as I always scrupulously called him, told stories of his early youth, and of a great sorrow which had led him to embark on a lawless and desperate life. His voice trembled, and tears rolled down his cheek. Was it semi-conscious acting, I wondered, or was his dark soul really stirred to its depths by the silence, the beauty, and the memories of youth? — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 122

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The ambiguity of tears — acting vs. genuine depth — is a charged character moment useful in any fiction about encountering a lawless man under sublime conditions.
• XREF: Plays against the moral fixity of characters in Things Fall Apart and other works where an outlaw’s interiority is deliberately kept opaque.