He had but a single road to a possible escape: by the little door in the wall through which Rebecca Daniels had ushered him into the auditorium.

He stooped as he turned, to elude any outstretched hands, drove himself like a wedge through the compacted mass of frightened spectators and, spite of the gloom, the deeper because of the glare preceding it, he reached the egress.

The uninitiated would never have suspected its existence, for the actors and staff of the establishment alone had the right and knowledge to use it.
"Lights, lights!" the functionaries were shouting.
By the time matches were struck and lanterns brought into the scene of confusion, Claudius had opened the panel, leaped through and closed it.
He did not dally in the passage, but hastened to follow the walled-in road as well as he might by which he had penetrated the theatrical region.
At the dividing-line, where the path parted to the men's and to the ladies' dressing-rooms, he perceived a ghostly figure in the obscurity which also prevailed here from the general extinction of the illuminant.
He was about shrinking back and fleeing in another direction when eyes blazed in the dark like a cat's, and the sweet, unmistakable voice of the singer, who had enthralled him, ejaculated: "As God lives, it is you!" "Suppose it is I!" he returned, impatiently.

"Stand aside, or--" "You must not pass here!" she returned, laying her hands on his lifted arm.
"Must not?
We shall see about that!" and he repulsed her violently.
"No, no; you are too hasty! I mean that would be a fatal course.

Here, here!" seizing him again and dragging him with her.