"In a little while I'll give you some veronal and you will sleep."
A change passed over his face and he sighed, "I'd like to sleep."
She drew back and turned to go out of the room. Yes, the connection between youth and middle age was broken for ever.
[X]
In the night she heard him coughing, and slipping into her flannel wrapper, she went into the kitchen and beat up an egg with milk and brandy. When she took it into his room, he appeared feverish and asked for veronal. "But the brandy will undo it," he added mechanically. His face was flushed and when she touched his hand it was burning. "Is it near day?" he inquired.
"No, it is only one o'clock. I thought you were sleeping."
"I was, but I wake up this way. I've done it every night for months."
She gave him veronal, and then raised his head while he sipped the eggnog. "An owl has been hooting so loud I thought it was at the window," he said, looking up at her over the rim of the glass.
"It's up in the big pine. You've been dreaming."
The fire had burned down to a few embers, which flickered out when she tried to stir them to life. A dim light from the screened lamp on the floor behind the chintz-covered chair left the bed and his uncovered face in shadow.