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.