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"Tell me, Mac, please, did you?" The dentist jumped up and thrust his face close to hers, his heavy jaw protruding, his little eyes twinkling meanly. "No," he shouted. "No, no, NO. Do you hear? Trina cowered before him. Then suddenly she began to sob aloud, weeping partly at his strange brutality, partly at the disappointment of his failure to find employment.
Did she choose him for better or for worse, deliberately, of her own free will, or was Trina herself allowed even a choice in the taking of that step that was to make or mar her life? The Woman is awakened, and, starting from her sleep, catches blindly at what first her newly opened eyes light upon.
"No, no," Trina had exclaimed, when the dentist had repeated this advice to her. "No, no, don't go near the law courts. I know them. The lawyers take all your money, and you lose your case. We're bad off as it is, without lawing about it." Then at last came the sale.
"There's sixty cents saved, anyhow," thought Trina, as she clutched the money in her pocket to keep it from rattling. Trina cooked the chops, and they breakfasted in silence. "Now," said McTeague as he rose, wiping the coffee from his thick mustache with the hollow of his palm, "now I'm going fishing, rain or no rain. I'm going to be gone all day."
"They don't know how good a dentist you are. What difference does a diploma make, if you're a first-class dentist? I guess that's all right. Mac, didn't you ever go to a dental college?" "No," answered McTeague, doggedly. "What was the good? I learned how to operate; wa'n't that enough?" "Hark," said Trina, suddenly. "Wasn't that the bell of your office?"
Trina, who was allowed to do nothing, sat in the bay window and fretted, calling to her mother from time to time: "The napkins are in the right-hand drawer of the pantry." "Yes, yes, I got um. Where do you geep der zoup blates?" "The soup plates are here already." "Say, Cousin Trina, is there a corkscrew? What is home without a corkscrew?" "In the kitchen-table drawer, in the left-hand corner."
He drew a short breath through his nose; his jaws suddenly gripped together vise-like. But this was only at times a strange, vexing spasm, that subsided almost immediately. For the most part, McTeague enjoyed the pleasure of these sittings with Trina with a certain strong calmness, blindly happy that she was there.
I'll work things somehow, oh, sure." "How long you going to be gone?" asked Trina. Marcus stared. "Why, I ain't EVER coming back," he vociferated. "I'm going to-morrow, and I'm going for good. I come to say good-by." Marcus stayed for upwards of an hour that evening. He talked on easily and agreeably, addressing himself as much to McTeague as to Trina. At last he rose. "Well, good-by, Doc."
He was wearing a pair of blue overalls; a navy-blue flannel shirt without a cravat; an old coat, faded, rain-washed, and ripped at the seams; and his woollen cap. "Say, Trina," he exclaimed, his heavy bass voice pitched just above a whisper, "let me in, will you, huh? Say, will you? I'm regularly starving, and I haven't slept in a Christian bed for two weeks."
Trina could fancy she almost saw the brassy glint in her husband's eyes. He raised one enormous lean fist. Then he growled: "If I had hold of you for a minute, by God, I'd make you dance. An' I will yet, I will yet. Don't you be afraid of that." He turned about, the moonlight showing like a layer of snow upon his massive shoulders.
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