Fielding turned on his cold-water tap of flippancy.
'It's a bad omen,' said he, with a nod towards the waving handkerchiefs.
'They hang out flags of surrender.' 'Hardly,' she replied, with a smile.

'I can't recognise that the flags are white'; and she added, 'I should like it less if they were.

These men are the workers.' 'The workers.' Fielding could hear Drake uttering the word in just the same tone, and his compassion for Clarice deepened.

Why?
he asked himself.

The girl was undergoing not a jot more punishment than a not over-rigid political justice would have meted out to her.