She struggled against the obsession and morbidly strove to picture to herself the actual execution: the black troops ranged in a clearing before the smouldering village, looking up at one figure--Gorley's--spinning on a rope.

But even upon that picture Drake's face obtruded.

She thrust out her hands to keep it off, as though it was living and pressing in upon her; for a moment she tried to conjure up Gorley's face, but it was blurred--only his form she could see spinning on a rope, and Drake beneath it, his features clear like an intaglio and firm-set with that same sense of duty which had forced him sternly to recount to her the truth that afternoon.

She recurred to her recent habit of comparing him with Mallinson.

She had a vision of Mallinson, with the same experience to relate,--if that were imaginable--fidgeting through evasions, grasping at any diversion she might throw out for him to play with.
But what if Drake's frankness, outspoken to the point of cruelty, sprang from an indifference to her?
Clarice had seen a good deal of Drake lately.