It gave her no satisfaction. The cold, disbelieving way in which the colonel of dragoons had received the complaint; the humiliation of the identity parade in which every man had ogled her knowingly, and one of the three, the man she had thought of as like her kindly village butcher, was not there and could not be accounted for; and the prolonged, prurient questioning of the court martial, had so filled her with cold fury that she longed to get to the punishment; yet when she and Elspeth were finally led into the inn courtyard where the two men were stripped to the waist and tied to rings in the wall, she was too exhausted to feel anything. She and Elspeth were the only women present, and gradually, as the flogging began, she realised that the same horrible prurience had returned. The officers and men were interested, not in the cruel whip slashing into the backs of their comrades, but in the effect of this sight on the two girls. It was as though each man was thinking he would have done the same, if he had known he would not be caught; and so the blame and real punishment were for the girls, for having dared to tempt them and then escape.
