She appealed to Gerald strongly. He felt an awful, enjoyable power over her, an instinctive cherishing very near to cruelty. For she was a victim. He felt that she was in his power, and he was generous. The electricity was turgid and voluptuously rich, in his limbs. He would be able to destroy her utterly in the strength of his discharge. But she was waiting in her separation, given.

They talked banalities for some time. Suddenly Birkin said:

‘There’s Julius!’ and he half rose to his feet, motioning to the newcomer. The girl, with a curious, almost evil motion, looked round over her shoulder without moving her body. Gerald watched her dark, soft hair swing over her ears. He felt her watching intensely the man who was approaching, so he looked too. He saw a pale, full–built young man with rather long, solid fair hair hanging from under his black hat, moving cumbrously down the room, his face lit up with a smile at once naive and warm, and vapid. He approached towards Birkin, with a haste of welcome.

It was not till he was quite close that he perceived the girl. He recoiled, went pale, and said, in a high squealing voice:

‘Pussum, what are YOU doing here?’

The cafe looked up like animals when they hear a cry. Halliday hung motionless, an almost imbecile smile flickering palely on his face. The girl only stared at him with a black look in which flared an unfathomable hell of knowledge, and a certain impotence. She was limited by him.

‘Why have you come back?’ repeated Halliday, in the same high, hysterical voice. ‘I told you not to come back.’

The girl did not answer, only stared in the same viscous, heavy fashion, straight at him, as he stood recoiled, as if for safety, against the next table.

‘You know you wanted her to come back—come and sit down,’ said Birkin to him.

‘No I didn’t want her to come back, and I told her not to come back. What have you come for, Pussum?’

‘For nothing from YOU,’ she said in a heavy voice of resentment.

‘Then why have you come back at ALL?’ cried Halliday, his voice rising to a kind of squeal.

‘She comes as she likes,’ said Birkin. ‘Are you going to sit down, or are you not?’

‘No, I won’t sit down with Pussum,’ cried Halliday.

‘I won’t hurt you, you needn’t be afraid,’ she said to him, very curtly, and yet with a sort of protectiveness towards him, in her voice.

Halliday came and sat at the table, putting his hand on his heart, and crying:

‘Oh, it’s given me such a turn! Pussum, I wish you wouldn’t do these things. Why did you come back?’

‘Not for anything from you,’ she repeated.

‘You’ve said that before,’ he cried in a high voice.

She turned completely away from him, to Gerald Crich, whose eyes were shining with a subtle amusement.

‘Were you ever vewy much afwaid of the savages?’ she asked in her calm, dull childish voice.