But that wasn't the end. Though the pinch of the game had passed, that wasn't the end by a long shot. Deep down, Lydia’s rush from the room felt to her like some new beginning to another story – perhaps a happier tale, or perhaps another just as desperate. She sped down the stairs head over heels and almost slipped at the bottom. Henry Fields, who was alert from the moment she left the room, and waiting for a call, took Lydia up and did his mortal best not to appear as utterly confounded and thunderstruck as he felt. At the final landing she collapsed, and then struggled to stand up and keep on running – she didn’t know where, and she couldn’t give a straw, as long as it was away, far away.
"By the Eternal Goddamn! Lydia, what in heaven's name has got into you!”
“Oh, Mr. Fields…” She recalled something. “No talking, – Please keep your voice down…”
“Keep my voice down? Why the devil should I do that? Tell me what happened! Fill me in! Or shall I go up myself, now?” He flipped out his pistol and was ready to mount the stairs. But Lydia tugged at his sleeve.
“No – Please wait – Stay here – Let’s—” she sighed in exhaustion—“Let’s go. Let’s leave this place.”
 Fields stepped back a yard to study her more roundly. “Leave? Why, whatever for? What satisfaction have you gained? I'm not leaving with my hands empty, Ms. Lydia.”
“No, but I must, I must. I –”

She would have continued, but just then she happened to look up from where she lay, sprawled out, to the uppermost story of the building: there was Christina leaning casually against the banister, smiling down on them. Fields followed Lydia’s staring eyes, and then his own eyes widened and he unclasped his hand. Yes, when Fields saw the woman on the third floor, it was all over: he dropped Lydia’s chemise and bounded up the stairs with his gun drawn. Christina watched all this with apparent interest, and seemed most laid-back and casual (an act, probably), and began to stroll down toward the second floor landing, where she lolled back against the wall and waited for Mr. Fields.

“This is a surprise encounter, Mr. Fields. Indeed, I didn’t expect to see you here. So why are you here?”
“Hellfire, you damned hussy.” He was steaming and looking past her to see if she was alone. “Don’t be smart with me. I’m here for you, & I’m here ‘cause you’re a damned pinching doublecrossing kind of vixen, and I know not only your type, but I know you. So tell me what you stole, quick, and hand it here.”
“I’m sorry to say that I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Fields, at all. And I must be going.”
“No, you shan’t be going nowhere until the woman below gets what she’s come for. You know what that is as well as she. Whatever it is –I don’t care if it’s half a wormeaten cabbage– hand it to me and we’ll go our ways. Are you looking for a sequel, Ms. Christina? Are you looking for fire or blood? You won’t find it here unless you truly want it.”
“Oh, oh. Mr. Fields—truly – there has been some monstrous mistake. I hold nothing of Lydia’s. Nothing. Now, I’m very sorry – I know you to be a good man on occasion– but, you see, you should not have interfered.”

Just then another voice echoed from above, and both Fields and Christina craned their heads upward to see who it was. “Mr. Fields is it? I’m Clara. Come up, come up.” Fields, suddenly perplexed, loosened his grip on Christina, who saw her opportunity and darted down the stairs, past Lydia, out into the street. Fields ignored the woman above and chased after Christina, and his gun fell from his hand with a great clatter onto the wooden planks of the stairs, when he was halfway down the last flight. He ran with all his power.

When Lydia saw the gun a few steps above her, and Clara, still placidly observing her from the third floor, her veins began to grow warm, her pulse quickened, and her face flushed over with some new mad and vindictive purpose. She knew, all of a sudden, what had to be done. Snatching the fallen pistol, she raced up the stairs and entered the room, where Clara had retired. There were the boxes and cages again, and there she heard the strange buzzing that seemed to arise out of the very floorboards, and there she saw Clara seated on the bed, composed, smiling pleasantly at her.

“Lydia, how sorry I am about our earlier misunderstanding. But it seems – if I read you right – that you’ve come to your senses at last. How happy I am, and how delighted. Now that Christina is gone, I would like to stay here and talk with you personal—” But the gunshot reported the rest of this speech, and Clara, her face in disbelief, in utter shock and horror, fell down on the floor, dying, unable to go on. A small gush of blood burst from her chest-wound, temporarily. And then Lydia turned around without saying a word, shut the door, and descended the stairs slowly. Henry Fields was at the bottom, his arm slashed open, bleeding.

“A tourniquet – I need more bandages.” Lydia ripped off her sleeves, and bound his arm up. They waited on the steps for a minute, afterward, and then Lydia handed over the gun.
“Do you have matches?” she asked him.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Burn it. Burn the place to the ground.”
He glanced over and studied her face. Her hands trembled like leaves in a storm. “I’d be tried and sentenced for arson. The fire will spread.”
“I shall be tried for murder. You heard the gunfire. As for you, no one else lives here, or nearby. We will take an hour to set it up, and put together a controlled blaze.” He was doubtful, and still opposed it.
But Lydia had seen too much horror to fear anything. “If you help me, I’ll give you $5,000. If you only help ignite this horrible & accursed place, I’ll reward you handsomely, on the spot. I leave the city today for the west, and you shall be free to accompany me. You’ll have no reason to fear the law.”

The theater manager hesitated, contemplated the stanched, drying blood of his wound, and allowed himself to be persuaded. Together they set up the kindling and then fired it up. The first floor caught in one moment, the second five minutes later, and then the building itself collapsed, and was smothered along with the fire, under its own weight. At least one decadent civilization had finally fallen, and received its due.

Two hours later, Ms. Lydia and Mr. Fields were on a Baltimore & Ohio line train due west to Cincinnati, the Queen of the West, and the hub of the recently finished, spanking new Miami & Erie Canal. Fields had left his assistant manager in charge for the next few months, because he was taking a ‘hiatus’, as he put it (at least until the City’s slapdash investigation of the burned-down boarding house came to a close). Lydia had packed all of her necessary articles and a few sets of clothes in a couple old trunks. The apartment on Fulton Street would be sold to a small-time editor from a paper around Bowling Green. She considered seeking a job at the Cincinnati Gazette, at the time one of the largest papers in town aside from the Enquirer and Advertiser. Also springing up during this time were some of the Abolitionist rags, which would famously (mid-decade, a few months later) be the targets of some of the largest riots and fires of the century. Cincinnati was a budding, humming, overbrimming steamboat, canal, and river town, and perhaps the best harbor toward which she and Fields could sail and eventually set anchor.

As they stopped in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, and Columbus, they stood out under the huge, far-reaching mantle of the stars and watched the last days of the Leonid meteor storm. Some things Lydia had never told her companion. And Mr. Henry Fields, being the man he was, both good and bad, crooked and kind, kept his own peace. Her husband Levi, he knew now, was not a fortunate man.