valid no doubt dragging himself to see. One group--a
well-dressed man in grey, a couple of women carrying babies, a
solemn-faced boy--halted immediately before her on the other side of the
railings, all talking, none listening, and these too turned their faces
to the road on the left, up which every instant the clamour and
trampling grew. Yet she could not ask. Her lips moved; but no sound came
from them. She was one incarnate apprehension. Across her intense fixity
moved pictures of no importance of Oliver as he had been at breakfast,
of her own bedroom with its softened paper, of the dark sanctuary and
the white figure on which she had looked just now.

They were coming thicker now; a troop of young men with their arms
linked swayed into sight, all talking or crying aloud, none
listening--all across the roadway, and behind them surged the crowd,
like a wave in a stone-fenced channel, male scarcely distinguishable
from female in that pack of faces, and under that sky that grew darker
every instant. Except for the noise, which Mabel now hardly noticed, so
thick and incessant it was, so complete her concentration in the sense
of sight--except for that, it might have been, from its suddenness and
overwhelming force, some mob of phantoms trooping on a sudden out of
some vista of the spiritual world visible across an open space, and
about to vanish again in obscurity. That empty street was full now on
this side and that so far as she could see; the young men were
gone--running or walking she hardly knew--round the corner to the right,
and the entire space was one stream of heads and faces, pressing so
fiercely that the group at the railings were detached like weeds and
drifted too, sideways, clutching at the bars, and swept away too and
vanished. And all the while the child tugged and tore at her skirts.

Certain things began to appear now above the heads of the crowd--objects
she could not distinguish in the failing light--poles, and fantastic
shapes, fragments of stuff resembling banners, moving as if alive,
turning from side to side, borne from beneath.

Faces, distorted with passion, looked at her from time to time as the
moving show went past, open mouths cried at her; but she hardly saw
them. She was watching those strange emblems, straining her eyes through
the dusk, striving to distinguish the battered broken shapes,
half-guessing, yet afraid to guess.

Then, on a sudden, from the hidden lamps beneath the eaves,