Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/165

 Sabine, indeed no! It is only to-day—I am well to-morrow. Not to sleep, it makes one weary for the day—n'est-ce pas? It is not a good country for sleep, I have found. In France I have always slept, ah, most easily! But here, no. In France—"

He paused a moment, and the room was perfectly still. He looked at her, but he did not see her, and Miss Sabina had a strange, swift memory of her little brother who died at school, and the look in his eyes when he cried to be taken home.

It was over in a moment, and M. Laroche shrugged his shoulders lightly.

"One imagines I come to America to sleep, hein?" he asked her, with such a humorous, friendly smile that she half-forgot her anxiety. But before he left for the old school, where dwindling classes lessened his scanty salary every year, she had made him promise to see the doctor before night.