Uncertain if it were at all permissible to light up a cigarette anywhere in the train, if he would be reproached and fined if he were to do so in this particular area that he was in, or if he even wanted to smoke at all, he floundered ambivalently before dropping the subject altogether.
"An Apostate: Nawin of Thais"
Steven Sills
Consider how repetitively and ambivalently they "reach out" to authority figures.
"Humanistic-Nursing"
Paterson, Josephine G.