He noticed, too, with an observation new to him, and quite involuntary, the details of the room in which he stood, the white panelling of the walls, the engravings in their frames, the china ranged upon a ledge near to the ceiling.

Of these things his mind took impressions with the minuteness almost of a camera.

They were real to him at this moment, because they formed the framework and setting of the girl's face and figure.
But Gorley's crime and his expiation of it became by contrast as remote to his apprehension in point of all connection with Clarice as they were in point of locality.

He could not realise them to himself as events which had actually happened and in which he had played a part, and he spoke in the toneless voice of one who relates a fable of which, through frequent repetition, he is tired.

Instinctively, in order to make the truth of his story palpable, he began to corroborate it with particulars which he would otherwise have spared his auditor, but with the same impersonal accent.