“Sonia, then, if you prefer it. I want simply to make plain the fact that I am speaking to you, the woman who bears that name, and not to the princess, as you are supposed to be.”
“Go on,” she said.
He was silent. She kept her eyes fixed on the dog until she was afraid that her stubbornness would look childish, or, worse even than that, timid. Then she looked up.
The next instant she wished that she had not, for the compelling look that met her own did for a moment make her feel afraid. She summoned all her force, however, and looked at him defiantly, her head raised, her eyes steady.
“I want you to explain to me what you meant yesterday,” he said.
“What I meant yesterday? What do you mean?”
“What you meant yesterday, driving home in the cab.”
“What I meant yesterday by driving home in the cab? I suppose my meaning was the obvious one—that I was tired and ill, and that my own carriage was not there.”
The timidity which she had felt before grew now into positive terror, as she felt the masterful force of this man’s power over her. So strong was her sense of it that she felt absolutely reckless of what she said or did, so long as she was able to resist him.
“You will not move me, or change my intention—my determination to get an answer to my question. Your evasion of it is childish as well as useless.”