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, but I overthrew the hideous creature, and sat on his neck as on a throne.

In Dover Street I was shackled with a hundred chains of disadvantage, but with one free hand I planted little seeds, right there in the mud of shame, that blossomed into the honeyed rose of widest freedom.