That night, Maria and Mrs. Addix sat in Maria’s room.  The parlor was in confusion, and so was the dining-room and the guest-chamber; indeed, the house was at that time in the height of its repairs.  That very day Maria’s mother’s room had been papered with a beautiful paper with a sheenlike satin, over which were strewn garlands of pink roses.  Pink was Miss Slome’s favorite color.  They had a new hard-wood floor laid in that room, and there was to be a pink rug, and white furniture painted with pink roses; Maria knew that her father and Miss Slome had picked it out.  That evening, after her father had gone, and she sat there with the sleeping Mrs. Addix, a sort of frenzy seized her, or, rather, she worked herself up to it.  She 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.

Mrs. Addix was still asleep.  She had begun to snore, in an odd sort of fashion, with deep, regular puffs of breath; it was like the beating of a drum to peace and rest, after a day of weary and unskilled labor unprofitable to the soul.  Maria sat down again.  She took up her work.  She felt very wicked, but she felt better.