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.  This poor crude dentist of Polk Street, stupid, ignorant, vulgar, with his sham education and plebeian tastes, whose only relaxations were to eat, to drink steam beer, and to play upon his concertina, was living through his first romance, his first idyl.  It was delightful.  The long hours he passed alone with Trina in the “Dental Parlors,” silent, only for the scraping of the instruments and the pouring of bud-burrs in the engine, in the foul atmosphere, overheated by the little stove and heavy with the smell of ether, creosote, and stale bedding, had all the charm of secret appointments and stolen meetings under the moon.

By degrees the operation progressed.  One day, just after McTeague had put in the temporary gutta-percha fillings and nothing more could be done at that sitting, Trina asked him to examine the rest of her teeth.  They were perfect, with one exception—­a spot of white caries on the lateral surface of an incisor.  McTeague filled it with gold, enlarging the cavity with hard-bits and hoe-excavators, and burring in afterward with half-cone burrs.  The cavity was deep, and Trina began to wince and moan.  To hurt Trina was a positive anguish for McTeague, yet an anguish which he was obliged to endure at every hour of the sitting.  It was harrowing—­he sweated under it—­to be forced to torture her, of all women in the world; could anything be worse than that?

“Hurt?” he inquired, anxiously.

She answered by frowning, with a sharp intake of breath, putting her fingers over her closed lips and nodding her head.  McTeague sprayed the tooth with glycerite of tannin, but without effect.  Rather than hurt her he found himself forced to the use of anaesthesia, which he hated.  He had a notion that the nitrous oxide gas was dangerous, so on this occasion, as on all others, used ether.

He put the sponge a half dozen times to Trina’s face, more nervous than he had ever been before, watching the symptoms closely.  Her breathing became short and irregular; there was a slight twitching of the muscles.  When her thumbs turned inward toward the palms, he took the sponge away.  She passed off very quickly, and, with a long sigh, sank back into the chair.

McTeague straightened up, putting the sponge upon the rack behind him, his eyes fixed upon Trina’s face.  For some time he stood watching her as she lay there, unconscious and helpless, and very pretty.  He was alone with her, and she was absolutely without defense.

Suddenly the animal in the man stirred and woke; the evil instincts that in him were so close to the surface leaped to life, shouting and clamoring.