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“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.

“That’s another short cut,” said the old man with a chuckle. “It’s soon over. The sensation of drowning is said to be quite pleasant. Then there is no more trouble–no more worrying because you have lost love, and because life has lost its savour.”

Rose was rather frightened. “When do I pay you?” she asked in a husky whisper.

“That’s all right,” said the old man ingratiatingly. “You don’t pay me till afterwards. We give credit.”

“Afterwards?”

“After the pool. Come, you will take this packet.”

“I will not,” said Rose with sudden determination, and shut the door in the old man’s ugly face. He kept on knocking.

Then she knew that it was only the knocking of the maid who brought her one cup of China tea, one piece of thin bread-and-butter, one large can of hot water, and the news that it was a fine morning.

After that there was a change in Rose. Some of the change was very subtle. Some of it was quite obvious. Even a lady-companion with the mind of a sheep can detect a change in personal appearance. She did detect it, and she spoke about it with discretion.

Rose answered: “Yes, two inches bigger. I don’t wear them at all now. Suppose I shall have to when I go back to town. And I find I simply cannot stand the other stuff. If I’ve got brown, that is because God’s sun meant me to be brown.”

“The merest touch would—-“

Rose was good-humoured, but obstinate.

And in time she went back to town. She had lost the habit of thinking about herself or of asking why people did not love her. She gave them the music that they wanted, and not the music that she knew they ought to have wanted. She became very simple and friendly. The tone of her voice softened, and the “r” sound no longer buzzed properly. She had gone back. And when she was not thinking about it at all, people began to love her.

One man particularly. And this was fortunate for Rose.

Papa, who was a director of Kekshose & Cie–they make such big motor-cars that nobody ever dares to let them do as much as they will, and hardly anybody can afford to buy them–came back for the wedding.

I was just going to say, when that foolish story interrupted me, that Cardinal Newman wrote a book called “Apologia pro vita sua.” I mention it not as a discovery but as a reminder. I believe that almost every imaginative author writes an Apologia pro vita sua, though under a different title and in a different guise. I could name one author (and so, of course, could you) who has written several such apologiae. If I have never done it myself, it is because I am not of the heroic type which undertakes lost causes. But I am not quite sure that I am not writing an Apologia pro horto meo. There is a serpent in every Eden, and its name is Pride. If my half-acre of cat-walk can claim to be a remote descendant of Eden, the serpent exists there too. I point out the good things in the garden. I cover up the defects, or–which is even worse–I make elaborate explanations to prove that they are not defects at all. I cannot expect anybody to like my garden as much as I do, but I want them to respect it. Jokes about it always seem to me to be in bad taste. A very good amateur gardener once came into my garden and mentioned just a few of the things that he noticed. He did it in the kindliest way. He taught me quite a good deal, and I hope he will never know how near I came to beating him on the head with the business end of a large rake.