thought of what her mother would have said to that beautiful new
paper, and furniture, and bay-window. Her mother also had liked pink.
She thought of how much her mother would have liked it, and how she
had gone without, and not made any complaint about her shabby old
furnishings, which had that very day been sold to Mrs. Addix for an
offset to her wages, and which Maria had seen carried away. She
thought about it all, and a red flush deepened on her cheeks, and her
blue eyes blazed. For the time she was abnormal. She passed the limit
which separates perfect sanity from mania. She had some fancy-work in
her hands. Mrs. White had suggested that she work in cross-stitch a
cover for the dresser in her new mother's room, and she was engaged
upon that, performing, as she thought, a duty, but her very soul
rebelled against it. She made some mistakes, and whenever she did she
realized with a sort of wicked glee that the thing would not be
perfect, and she never tried to rectify them.

Finally, Maria laid her work softly on the table, beside which she
was sitting. She glanced at Mrs. Addix, whose heavy, measured
breathing filled the room, then she arose. She took the lamp from the
table, and tiptoed out. Maria stole across the hall. The room which
had been her father's and mother's was entirely empty, and the roses
on the satiny wall-paper gleamed out as if they were real. There was
a white-and-silver picture-moulding. Maria set her lamp on the floor.
She looked at the great bay-window, she looked at the roses on the
walls. Then she did a mad thing. The paper was freshly put on; it was
hardly dry. Maria deliberately approached the wall near the
bay-window, where the paper looked somewhat damp; she inserted her
slender little fingers, with a scratching of her nails under the
edge, and she tore off a great, ragged strip. Then she took up her
lamp and returned to her room.