She occupied a chair right up to the front, and several times she turned her head toward one or another of her CONFRERES and smiled her appreciation of the remarks.
Colonel Van Gilbert done, Ernest arose and began to speak.

He began in a low voice, haltingly and modestly, and with an air of evident embarrassment.

He spoke of his birth in the working class, and of the sordidness and wretchedness of his environment, where flesh and spirit were alike starved and tormented.

He described his ambitions and ideals, and his conception of the paradise wherein lived the people of the upper classes.

As he said: "Up above me, I knew, were unselfishnesses of the spirit, clean and noble thinking, keen intellectual living.