kin.

'You're silent tonight, Wupert,' she said to him, with a slight
insolence, being safe with the other man.

Halliday was coming back, looking forlorn and sick.

'Pussum,' he said, 'I wish you wouldn't do these things--Oh!' He sank
in his chair with a groan.

'You'd better go home,' she said to him.

'I WILL go home,' he said. 'But won't you all come along. Won't you
come round to the flat?' he said to Gerald. 'I should be so glad if you
would. Do--that'll be splendid. I say?' He looked round for a waiter.
'Get me a taxi.' Then he groaned again. 'Oh I do feel--perfectly
ghastly! Pussum, you see what you do to me.'

'Then why are you such an idiot?' she said with sullen calm.

'But I'm not an idiot! Oh, how awful! Do come, everybody, it will be so
splendid. Pussum, you are coming. What? Oh but you MUST come, yes, you
must. What? Oh, my dear girl, don't make a fuss now, I feel
perfectly--Oh, it's so ghastly--Ho!--er! Oh!'

'You know you can't drink,' she said to him, coldly.

'I tell you it isn't drink--it's your disgusting behaviour, Pussum,
it's nothing else. Oh, how awful! Libidnikov, do let us go.'

'He's only drunk one glass--only one glass,' came the rapid, hushed
voice of the young Russian.

They all moved off to the door. The girl kept near to Gerald, and
seemed to be at one in her motion with him. He was aware of this, and
filled with demon-satisfaction that his motion held good for two. He
held her in the hollow of his will, and she was soft, secret, invisible
in her stirring there.

They crowded five of them into the taxi-cab. Halliday lurched in first,
and dropped into his seat against the other window. Then the Pussum
took her place, and Gerald sat next to her. They heard the young
Russian giving orders to the driver, then they were all seated in the
dark, crowded close together, Halliday groaning and leaning out of the
window. They felt the swift, muffled motion of the car.

The Pussum sat near to Gerald, and she seemed to become soft, subtly to
infuse herself into his bones, as if she were passing into him in a
black, electric flow. Her being suffused into his veins like a magnetic
darkness, and concentrated at the base of his spine like a fearful
source of power. Meanwhile her voice sounded out reedy and nonchalant,
as she talked indifferently with Birkin and with Maxim. Between her and
Gerald was this silence and this black, electric comprehension in the
darkness. Then she found his ha