were too much to bear.
'Do you mean,' said Gerald, with the punctiliousness of a man who has
been drinking, 'that you are afraid of the sight of a black-beetle, or
you are afraid of a black-beetle biting you, or doing you some harm?'
'Do they bite?' cried the girl.
'How perfectly loathsome!' exclaimed Halliday.
'I don't know,' replied Gerald, looking round the table. 'Do
black-beetles bite? But that isn't the point. Are you afraid of their
biting, or is it a metaphysical antipathy?'
The girl was looking full upon him all the time with inchoate eyes.
'Oh, I think they're beastly, they're horrid,' she cried. 'If I see
one, it gives me the creeps all over. If one were to crawl on me, I'm
SURE I should die--I'm sure I should.'
'I hope not,' whispered the young Russian.
'I'm sure I should, Maxim,' she asseverated.
'Then one won't crawl on you,' said Gerald, smiling and knowing. In
some strange way he understood her.
'It's metaphysical, as Gerald says,' Birkin stated.
There was a little pause of uneasiness.
'And are you afraid of nothing else, Pussum?' asked the young Russian,
in his quick, hushed, elegant manner.
'Not weally,' she said. 'I am afwaid of some things, but not weally the
same. I'm not afwaid of BLOOD.'
'Not afwaid of blood!' exclaimed a young man with a thick, pale,
jeering face, who had just come to the table and was drinking whisky.
The Pussum turned on him a sulky look of dislike, low and ugly.
'Aren't you really afraid of blud?' the other persisted, a sneer all
over his face.
'No, I'm not,' she retorted.
'Why, have you ever seen blood, except in a dentist's spittoon?' jeered
the young man.
'I wasn't speaking to you,' she replied rather superbly.
'You can answer me, can't you?' he said.
For reply, she suddenly jabbed a knife across his thick, pale hand. He
started up with a vulgar curse.
'Show's what you are,' said the Pussum in contempt.
'Curse you,' said the young man, standing by the table and looking down
at her with acrid malevolence.
'Stop that,' said Gerald, in quick, instinctive command.
The young man stood looking down at her with sardonic contempt, a
cowed, self-conscious look on his thick, pale face. The blood began to
flow from his hand.
'Oh, how horrible, take it away!' squealed Halliday, turning green and
averting his face.
'D'you feel ill?' asked the sardonic young man, in some concern. 'Do
you feel ill, Julius? Garn, it's nothing, man, don't give her the
pleasure of letting her think she's performed a feat--don't give her
the satisfaction, man--it's just what she wants.'
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