At last I had made an impression. My earnestness seemed to have shaken her contemptuous indifference. She looked at me steadily, frowning a little, but regarding me less as if I were a clod and more and more as if I were the puzzle she had once declared me to be. I did not shun her look now, but met it eye to eye.
“Do you believe me?” I demanded.
Slowly her frown was disappearing.
“Do you believe me?” I said, again. “You must.”
“Must?”
“Yes, you must. I shall make you. If not now, at some other time. You must believe me, Miss Colton.”
The frown disappeared altogether and she smiled.
“If you order me to I suppose I must,” she said, with a shrug of mock resignation. “I should have learned by this time that it is useless to say no when you say yes, Mr. Paine.”
“But do you?”
She turned altogether and faced me.