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.