She stood up, her heart quickening a little—­only once before had she heard such a sound, once before, in a square, where men raged about a point beneath a platform....

She stepped swiftly out of her seat, passed down the aisle, drew back the curtains beneath the west window, lifted the latch and stepped out.

* * * * *

The street, from where she looked over the railings that barred the entrance to the church, seemed unusually empty and dark.  To right and left stretched the houses, overhead the darkening sky was flushed with rose; but it seemed as if the public lights had been forgotten.  There was not a living being to be seen.

She had put her hand on the latch of the gate, to open it and go out, when a sudden patter of footsteps made her hesitate; and the next instant a child appeared panting, breathless and terrified, running with her hands before her.

“They’re coming, they’re coming,” sobbed the child, seeing the face looking at her.  Then she clung to the bars, staring over her shoulder.

Mabel lifted the latch in an instant; the child sprang in, ran to the door and beat against it, then turning, seized her dress and cowered against her.  Mabel shut the gate.

“There, there,” she said.  “Who is it?  Who are coming?”

But the child hid her face, drawing at the kindly skirts; and the next moment came the roar of voices and the trampling of footsteps.

* * * * *

It was not more than a few seconds before the heralds of that grim procession came past.  First came a flying squadron of children, laughing, terrified, fascinated, screaming, turning their heads as they ran, with a dog or two yelping among them, and a few women drifting sideways along the pavements.  A face of a man, Mabel saw as she glanced in terror upwards, had appeared at the windows opposite, pale and eager—­some invalid 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