Trina’s emotions had narrowed with the narrowing of her daily life.  They reduced themselves at last to but two, her passion for her money and her perverted love for her husband when he was brutal.  She was a strange woman during these days.

Trina had come to be on very intimate terms with Maria Macapa, and in the end the dentist’s wife and the maid of all work became great friends.  Maria was constantly in and out of Trina’s room, and, whenever she could, Trina threw a shawl over her head and returned Maria’s calls.  Trina could reach Zerkow’s dirty house without going into the street.  The back yard of the flat had a gate that opened into a little inclosure where Zerkow kept his decrepit horse and ramshackle wagon, and from thence Trina could enter directly into Maria’s kitchen.  Trina made long visits to Maria during the morning in her dressing-gown and curl papers, and the two talked at great length over a cup of tea served on the edge of the sink or a corner of the laundry table.  The talk was all of their husbands and of what to do when they came home in aggressive moods.

“You never ought to fight um,” advised Maria.  “It only makes um worse.  Just hump your back, and it’s soonest over.”

They told each other of their husbands’ brutalities, taking a strange sort of pride in recounting some particularly savage blow, each trying to make out that her own husband was the most cruel.  They critically compared each other’s bruises, each one glad when she could exhibit the worst.  They exaggerated, they invented details, and, as if proud of their beatings, as if glorying in their husbands’ mishandling, lied to each other, magnifying their own maltreatment.  They had long and excited arguments as to which were the most effective means of punishment, the rope’s ends and cart whips such as Zerkow used, or the fists and backs of hair-brushes affected by McTeague.  Maria contended that the lash of the whip hurt the most; Trina, that the butt did the most injury.

Maria showed Trina the holes in the walls and the loosened boards in the flooring where Zerkow had been searching for the gold plate.  Of late he had been digging in the back yard and had ransacked the hay in his horse-shed for the concealed leather chest he imagined he would find.  But he was becoming impatient, evidently.

“The way he goes on,” Maria told Trina, “is somethun dreadful.  He’s gettun regularly sick with it—­got a fever every night—­don’t sleep, and when he does, talks to himself.  Says ‘More’n a hundred pieces, an’ every one of ’em gold.  More’n a hundred pieces, an’ every one of ’em gold.’  Then he’ll whale me with his whip, and shout, ’You know where it is.  Tell me, tell me, you swine, or I’ll do for you.’  An’ then he’ll get down on his knees and whimper, and beg me to tell um where I’ve hid it.  He’s just gone plum crazy.  Sometimes he has regular fits, he gets so mad, and rolls on the floor and scratches himself.”