So sudden and complete was the catastrophe, although
slowly prepared by a leak in the overheated chimney between the floors,
that even the excitement of fear and exertion was spared the survivors.
There was bewilderment and stupor, but neither uproar nor confusion.
People found themselves wandering in the woods, half awake and half
dressed, having descended from the balconies and leaped from the
windows,--they knew not how. Others on the upper floor neither awoke nor
moved from their beds, but were suffocated without a cry. From the first
an instinctive idea of the hopelessness of combating the conflagration
possessed them all; to a blind, automatic feeling to flee the building
was added the slow mechanism of the somnambulist; delicate women walked
speechlessly, but securely, along ledges and roofs from which they
would have fallen by the mere light of reason and of day. There was no
crowding or impeding haste in their dumb exodus. It was only when Mrs.
Barker awoke disheveled in the courtyard, and with an hysterical outcry
rushed back into the hotel, that there was any sign of panic.
Mrs. Horncastle, who was standing near, fully dressed as from some
night-long vigil, quickly followed her. The half-frantic woman was
making directly for her own apartments, whose windows those in
the courtyard could see were already belching smoke. Suddenly Mrs.
Horncastle stopped with a bitter cry and clasped her forehead.
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