I did not sit down.

I ran.

I will not linger on the next few minutes, because they were frightening, and because the fear is not the point of this story — the point is what I did with it.

I locked myself in the guest bathroom.

I broke the narrow stained-glass window with a heavy marble soap dish, and I climbed out through the frame into the storm, and yes, the glass cut me, and yes, I lost my shoes in the mud of the garden, and I ran down the long estate road in the cold rain with men shouting somewhere behind me in the dark.

It was not graceful.