"In that house," she said, pointing to a dilapidated farmhouse nearly
smothered in greenery and totally unkempt in appearance, "lives a
relative of ours, a second cousin. We must stop and see her."

"Oh, no," I cried out, for I was then young and selfish; "don't let me
have to see any more relatives to-day."

"Yes, we must stop," said my firm cousin. "She is a good girl and will
remember it always if you stop, and will be bitterly disappointed if you
do not."

We drew up; a figure promptly appeared on the rickety porch and came
down between the tall grasses that almost obliterated the path to the
torn gate.

"How old is she?" I whispered.

"About twenty-eight; yes, twenty-nine next December."

"She looks forty," I said.

"You must remember she has had a hard time on this farm--it's no good,
the farm, and she and her father live here alone now."

Cousin Artemisia--for that was her ironical apportionment as to
name--came down to the buggy and stood between the wheels and reached
over a long slim hand in greeting to my companion. I thought she would
never let go. Then I was introduced. Cousin Artemisia stood back and
looked at me as if she would read every thought in my whole soul. The
most devouring curiosity, the most rapt wonder, the still,
thunderstruck, hypnotized look of absorbed contemplation, were in her
eyes. All my features went, I am sure, into her memory's irremediable
printing, to stay there forever. All this--more shame to me!--was only
a bother to me, for I did not at all understand what it could mean to a
poor lonely soul to have a vision of a young relative from the great big
outside world. I will not accuse myself of cruelty--only of ignorance
and carelessness; but that, of course, is bad enough. To pay me for
this, and as a perpetual punishment, I have the memory of her last look.
After some suave and polite nothings from my lips I nudged my driver
cousin and we went on over the hill, leaving Artemisia alone with her
solitariness, stunned, it may be, for the moment by our swift passing,
as a prisoner might be into whose dark cell a ray of light had
penetrated and then been quickly withdrawn, making the darkness blacker
than before. That last long look! I cannot describe it, but I shall
remember it always. At that moment there was in Cousin Artemisia's face
the suppressed longing of the imprisoned soul, the appeal for help to
one that was believed to have had opportunity, the cry of the hopeless