“No, no, no,” exclaimed Trina.  “It’s not a hundred dollars.  You won’t touch it; you won’t touch my money, I tell you.”

“Ah, how does it happen to be yours, I’d like to know?”

“It’s mine!  It’s mine!  It’s mine!” cried Trina, her face scarlet, her teeth clicking like the snap of a closing purse.

“It ain’t any more yours than it is mine.”

“Every penny of it is mine.”

“Ah, what a fine fix you’d get me into,” growled the dentist.  “I’ve signed the paper with the owner; that’s business, you know, that’s business, you know; and now you go back on me.  Suppose we’d taken the house, we’d ‘a’ shared the rent, wouldn’t we, just as we do here?”

Trina shrugged her shoulders with a great affectation of indifference and began chopping the onions again.

“You settle it with the owner,” she said.  “It’s your affair; you’ve got the money.”  She pretended to assume a certain calmness as though the matter was something that no longer affected her.  Her manner exasperated McTeague all the more.

“No, I won’t; no, I won’t; I won’t either,” he shouted.  “I’ll pay my half and he can come to you for the other half.”  Trina put a hand over her ear to shut out his clamor.

“Ah, don’t try and be smart,” cried McTeague.  “Come, now, yes or no, will you pay your half?”

“You heard what I said.”

“Will you pay it?”

“No.”

“Miser!” shouted McTeague.  “Miser! you’re worse than old Zerkow.  All right, all right, keep your money.  I’ll pay the whole thirty-five.  I’d rather lose it than be such a miser as you.”

“Haven’t you got anything to do,” returned Trina, “instead of staying here and abusing me?”

“Well, then, for the last time, will you help me out?” Trina cut the heads of a fresh bunch of onions and gave no answer.

“Huh? will you?”

“I’d like to have my kitchen to myself, please,” she said in a mincing way, irritating to a last degree.  The dentist stamped out of the room, banging the door behind him.

For nearly a week the breach between them remained unhealed.  Trina only spoke to the dentist in monosyllables, while he, exasperated at her calmness and frigid reserve, sulked in his “Dental Parlors,” muttering terrible things beneath his mustache, or finding solace in his concertina, playing his six lugubrious airs over and over again, or swearing frightful oaths at his canary.  When Heise paid his bill, McTeague, in a fury, sent the amount to the owner of the little house.

There was no formal reconciliation between the dentist and his little woman.  Their relations readjusted themselves inevitably.  By the end of the week they were as amicable as ever, but it was long before they spoke of the little house again.  Nor did they ever revisit it of a Sunday afternoon.  A month or so later the Ryers told them that the owner himself had moved in.  The McTeagues never occupied that little house.