-play horse with me? Now you go
in there an' _stop_ it, and then you come along with me an' explain it
to the Judge. See? Now, get a wiggle on."

CHAPTER IX

From the moment that he went out upon the little stage of his theatre
until he came wearily into his own apartment at five o'clock, Henry
lived upon a mental plane so far removed from his usual existence that
he was hardly aware of any bodily sensations at all. A brand-new group
of emotions had picked him out for their play-ground, and Henry had no
time to be self-conscious.

In the first place, he was too stunned to remember that he hated to be
conspicuous, and that he had never made a public speech in all his
life. He was paralyzed by the contrast between last night and today.
Consequently, he made a very good speech indeed, and it had some acrid
humour in it, too, and the audience actually cheered him--although
later, when he reviewed the incident in his mind, he had to admit that
the cheers were loudest just after he had told the audience to keep
the souvenirs.

Then, when in the custody of the patrolman, he went out to the street,
his mood was still so concentrated, his anger and depression so acute,
that he was transported out of the very circumstances which caused him
to be angry and depressed. He realized, with a hazy sort of
perception, that a tail of small boys had attached itself to the
lodestar of the policeman's uniform; but even at this indignity, his
reaction was curiously impersonal. It was as though the spiritual part
of him and the material part had got a divorce; and the spiritual
part, which was the plaintiff, stood coldly aloof, watching the
material part tramping down Main Street, with a flat-footed policeman
beside it, a voluntary escort behind, and rumour flying on ahead to
all the newspapers. He was actually too humiliated to suffer from the
humiliation.

To be sure, this wasn't by any means his first entanglement with the
law, but heretofore his occasions had been marked by a very different
ritual. He recalled, phlegmatically, that whenever, in the old days, a
member of the motorcycle squad had shot past him, and signalled to
him to stop, the man had always treated him more or less fraternally,
in recognition of the fellowship of high speed. The traffic officers
had cheerfully delivered a summons with one hand, and accepted a cigar
with the other. There was a sort of sporting code about it; and even
in Court, a gentleman who