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.

Chapter VIII

When Maria's father returned that night, he came, as usual, straight
to the room wherein she and Mrs. Addix were sitting. Maria regarded
her father with a sort of contemptuous wonder, tinctured with
unwilling admiration. Her father, on his return from his evenings
spent with Miss Ida Slome, looked always years younger than Maria had
ever seen him. There was the humidity of youth in his eyes, the flush
of youth on his cheeks, the triumph of youth in his expression. Harry
Edgham, in spite of lines on his face, in spite, even, of a shimmer
of gray and thinness of hair on the temples, looked as young as youth
itself, in this rejuvenation of his affecti