It seemed to him that something of a terrible and devastating nature had happened.

The waiter changed their plates once more.
In his agitation Ralph rose, turned his back upon Mary, and looked out of the window.

The people in the street seemed to him only a dissolving and combining pattern of black particles; which, for the moment, represented very well the involuntary procession of feelings and thoughts which formed and dissolved in rapid succession in his own mind.
At one moment he exulted in the thought that Mary loved him; at the next, it seemed that he was without feeling for her; her love was repulsive to him.

Now he felt urged to marry her at once; now to disappear and never see her again.

In order to control this disorderly race of thought he forced himself to read the name on the chemist's shop directly opposite him; then to examine the objects in the shop windows, and then to focus his eyes exactly upon a little group of women looking in at the great windows of a large draper's shop.