overwhelmed him.

"Well, an opera cloak did the work better than an overcoat would have
done," Stafford answered, laughing. "It was a flash of real genius to
think of it. You did think it all out in the second, didn't you?"

Stafford looked at him curiously, for he wondered if the choice of a
soft cloak which could more easily be wrapped round the burning woman
than an overcoat was accidental, or whether it was the product of a
mind of unusual decision.

Byng puffed out a great cloud of smoke and laughed again quietly as he
replied:

"Well, I've had a good deal of lion and rhinoceros shooting in my
time, and I've had to make up my mind pretty quick now and then; so I
suppose it gets to be a habit. You don't stop to think when the
trouble's on you; you think as you go. If I'd stopped to think, I'd
have funked the whole thing, I suppose--jumping from that box onto the
stage, and grabbing a lady in my arms, all in the open, as it
were. But that wouldn't have been the natural man. The natural man
that's in most of us, even when we're not very clever, does things
right. It's when the conventional man comes in and says, Let us
consider, that we go wrong. By Jingo, Al'mah was as near having her
beauty spoiled as any woman ever was; but she's only got a few nasty
burns on the arm and has singed her hair a little."

"You've seen her to-day, then?"

Stafford looked at him with some curiosity, for the event was one