When the lady-companion slept--and she was a perfectly grand sleeper--Rose wandered all the afternoon about the common. She was not improving herself any longer, because that was held to be bad for her health. She worried because she felt that she had lost the love of people. The longer she lived in the country, the more she wanted to be loved. She even put tentative questions to the lady-companion, to find out how it was that she was not loved. But these tentative questions were of no use, because the lady-companion maintained that Rose was loved very much indeed, being under the impression that this was the kind of thing that she was paid to say. She was a conscientious woman. And then one night Rose had a dream. In her dream she heard a loud knocking at the cottage door, and she herself went to see who was there. There stood a very ugly old pedlar with a leer on his face, and a pack on his back. He swung his pack round and took off the piece of American cloth from the top of it. "And what can I sell you to-day, my pretty lady?" he asked. "Nothing, thank you," said Rose. "Don't say that," said the pedlar. "You have dealt with me before, you know." "Never," said Rose. "You are mistaken." "Yes, you did," said the ugly old man stoutly. "You bought a packet of Amoricide, and those that deal with me once must deal with me again." "What is Amoricide?" asked Rose, who began to have a feeling that after all she did recognise the pedlar's face. "Well, well," said the pedlar, "that's telling. I don't mind owning that there is a lot of the Air of Superiority in it, and there are other things. You have no complaint to make about it, have you? It does its work all right. I guarantee that it will exterminate love absolutely. It is death to love. Have you not found it so?" "I have found," said Rose, "that it has destroyed the love of others for me, but not the love of me for others." The old man chuckled. "That's it. That's right. That's why the people who deal with me once must deal with me again. You must have one more little packet." "This time I want to know what is in it." The pedlar began to look uneasy. "Don't ask too many questions. We call it Taedium Vitae. It is a splendid thing." Rose was highly educated, and she told him that Taedium Vitae meant life-weariness, and that she would like to know how it acted. "You go down the hill," said the old man absent-mindedly, as if he were speaking to himself, "and then, of course, you come to the pine wood." Rose nodded. "Yes, I know it. Through the wood is the short cut if you are going to the station. The stile is rather awkward to climb over." "You can manage it all right. You have done it before. And you know the dark pool under the trees?" Rose nodded. This time she did not speak.