Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/147



ISS SABINA dropped a lump of sugar into each of the little cups and poured the coffee with a pretty carefulness, handing one across the table and rising with a grace that was almost girlish.

"Shall we drink it on the porch?" she asked, in her gentle, deprecating voice with the minor tone in it, that one associated with her as closely as her gray dress, her quaint old-fashioned rings, and the faint odor of dried rose-leaves—not attar or essence of rose, but dried rose-leaves—that went with her when she walked.

For ten years she had asked this question,