Bit by bit she sought to reconstruct the scene, piecing it together out of Drake's words; but somehow that scene would not be reconstructed.

She gradually found herself considering Drake's words as a light thrown upon the man who spoke them, rather than as the description of an actual incident.

The humiliation which she experienced made her shrink with a certain repulsion from her recollections of Gorley and dwell instead upon the contrasting tones in Drake's voice, the contrasting expressions upon his face when he spoke to her and when he merely narrated his story.

In the first instance gentleness had been the dominant characteristic, in the second indifference; and that very indifference, while it repelled her, magnetised her thoughts.
Something indeed of the same process which had caused that appearance of indifference in Drake was now repeating itself in Clarice.

Drake was superseding Gorley in her mind.