IX + 

After two more raids he was delivered at his home by patrol wagon, and left with not entirely sardonic cheers by the policemen. + 

Cleo rushed to meet him, crying, “Oh, you’re safe! Oh, my dear, you’re hurt!” + 

His cheek was slightly bleeding. + 

In a passion of admiration for himself so hot that it extended even to her, he clasped her, kissed her wetly, and roared, “It’s nothing! Oh, it went great! We raided five places⁠—arrested twenty-seven criminals⁠—took them in every sort of horrible debauchery⁠—things I never dreamed could exist!” + 

“You poor dear!” + 

There was not enough audience, with merely Cleo, and the maid peering from the back of the hall. + 

“Let’s go and tell the kids. Maybe they’ll be proud of their dad!” he interrupted her. + 

“Dear, they’re asleep⁠—” + 

“Oh! I see! Sleep is more important to ’em than to know their father is a man who isn’t afraid to back up his gospel with his very life!” + 

“Oh, I didn’t mean⁠—I meant⁠—Yes, of course, you’re right. It’ll be a wonderful example and inspiration. But let me put some stickum plaster on your cheek first.” + 

By the time she had washed the cut, and bound it and fussed over it, he had forgotten the children and their need of an heroic exemplar, as she had expected, and he sat on the edge of the bathtub telling her that he was an entire Trojan army. She was so worshipful that he became almost amorous, until it seemed to him from her anxious patting of his arm that she was trying to make him so. It angered him⁠—that she, so unappealing, should have the egotism to try to attract a man like himself. He went off to his own room, wishing that Lulu were here to rejoice in his splendor, the beginning of his fame as the up-to-date John Wesley. + 