of my trouble. For years--actually for
years--after that eventful day of mingled triumph and disgrace, I
could not think of the unhappy incident without inward squirming. I
remember distinctly how the little scene would suddenly flash upon me
at night, as I lay awake in bed, and I would turn over impatiently, as
if to shake off a nightmare; and this so long after the occurrence
that I was myself amazed at the persistence of the nightmare. I had
never been reproached by any one for my conduct on Graduation Day. Why
could I not forgive myself? I studied the matter deeply--it wearies me
to remember how deeply--till at last I understood that it was wounded
vanity that hurt so, and no nobler remorse. Then, and only then, was
the ghost laid. If it ever tried to get up again, after that, I only
had to call it names to see it scurry back to its grave and pull the
sod down after it.

Before I had laid my ghost, a friend told me of a similar experience
of his boyhood. He was present at a small private entertainment, and a
violinist who should have played being absent, the host asked for a
volunteer to take his place. My friend, then a boy in his teens,
offered himself, and actually stood up with the violin in his hands,
as if to play. But he could not even hold the instrument properly--he
had never been taught the violin. He told me he never knew what
possessed him to get up and make a fool of himself before a roomful of
people; but he was certain that ten thousand imps possessed him and
tormented him for years and years after if only he remembered the
incident.

My friend's confession was such a consolation to me that I could not
help thinking I might do some other poor wretch a world of good by
offering him my company and that of my friend in his misery. For if it
took me a long time to find out that I was a vain fool, the corollary
did not escape me: there must be other vain fools.

CHAPTER XVI

DOVER STREET

What happened next was Dover Street.

And what was Dover Street?

Ask rather, What was it not? Dover Street was my fairest garden of
girlhood, a gate of paradise, a window facing on a broad avenue of
life. Dover Street was a prison, a school of discipline, a battlefield
of sordid strife. The air in Dover Street was heavy with evil odors of
degradation, but a breath from the uppermost heavens rippled through,
whispering of infinite things. In Dover Street the dragon poverty
gripped me for a last fight, b