'I'm not afwaid of anything except black-beetles,' said the Pussum,
looking up suddenly and staring with her black eyes, on which there
seemed an unseeing film of flame, fully upon Gerald. He laughed
dangerously, from the blood. Her childish speech caressed his nerves,
and her burning, filmed eyes, turned now full upon him, oblivious of
all her antecedents, gave him a sort of licence.
'I'm not,' she protested. 'I'm not afraid of other things. But
black-beetles--ugh!' she shuddered convulsively, as if the very thought
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.