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.