It was as though a cold air had dispersed the fumes of his libations, and the situation loomed before him black and naked as the ruins of a fire.

Old habits, old restraints, the hand of inherited order, plucked back the bewildered mind which passion had jolted from its ruts.
Trenor's eye had the haggard look of the sleep-walker waked on a deathly ledge.
"Go home! Go away from here"-- --he stammered, and turning his back on her walked toward the hearth.
The sharp release from her fears restored Lily to immediate lucidity.
The collapse of Trenor's will left her in control, and she heard herself, in a voice that was her own yet outside herself, bidding him ring for the servant, bidding him give the order for a hansom, directing him to put her in it when it came.

Whence the strength came to her she knew not; but an insistent voice warned her that she must leave the house openly, and nerved her, in the hall before the hovering care taker, to exchange light words with Trenor, and charge him with the usual messages for Judy, while all the while she shook with inward loathing.

On the doorstep, with the street before her, she felt a mad throb of liberation, intoxicating as the prisoner's first draught of free air; but the clearness of brain continued, and she noted the mute aspect of Fifth Avenue, guessed at the lateness of the hour, and even observed a man's figure--was there something half-familiar in its outline ?--which, as she entered the hansom, turned from the opposite corner and vanished in the obscurity of the side street.
But with the turn of the wheels reaction came, and shuddering darkness closed on her.

"I can't think--I can't think," she moaned, and leaned her head against the rattling side of the cab.