“And, yes—­yes—­I did too,” she answered.  “I used to make tea just at that time and sit there for a whole hour.”

“And didn’t you sit close to the partition on your side?  Sometimes I was sure of it.  I could even fancy that I could hear your dress brushing against the wall-paper close beside me.  Didn’t you sit close to the partition?”

“I—­I don’t know where I sat.”

Old Grannis shyly put out his hand and took hers as it lay upon her lap.

“Didn’t you sit close to the partition on your side?” he insisted.

“No—­I don’t know—­perhaps—­sometimes.  Oh, yes,” she exclaimed, with a little gasp, “Oh, yes, I often did.”

Then Old Grannis put his arm about her, and kissed her faded cheek, that flushed to pink upon the instant.

After that they spoke but little.  The day lapsed slowly into twilight, and the two old people sat there in the gray evening, quietly, quietly, their hands in each other’s hands, “keeping company,” but now with nothing to separate them.  It had come at last.  After all these years they were together; they understood each other.  They stood at length in a little Elysium of their own creating.  They walked hand in hand in a delicious garden where it was always autumn.  Far from the world and together they entered upon the long retarded romance of their commonplace and uneventful lives.

CHAPTER 18

That same night McTeague was awakened by a shrill scream, and woke to find Trina’s arms around his neck.  She was trembling so that the bed-springs creaked.

“Huh?” cried the dentist, sitting up in bed, raising his clinched fists.  “Huh?  What?  What?  What is it?  What is it?”

“Oh, Mac,” gasped his wife, “I had such an awful dream.  I dreamed about Maria.  I thought she was chasing me, and I couldn’t run, and her throat was—­Oh, she was all covered with blood.  Oh-h, I am so frightened!”

Trina had borne up very well for the first day or so after the affair, and had given her testimony to the coroner with far greater calmness than Heise.  It was only a week later that the horror of the thing came upon her again.  She was so nervous that she hardly dared to be alone in the daytime, and almost every night woke with a cry of terror, trembling with the recollection of some dreadful nightmare.  The dentist was irritated beyond all expression by her nervousness, and especially was he exasperated when her cries woke him suddenly in the middle of the night.  He would sit up in bed, rolling his eyes wildly, throwing out his huge fists—­at what, he did not know—­exclaiming, “What what—­” bewildered and hopelessly confused.  Then when he realized that it was only Trina, his anger kindled abruptly.

“Oh, you and your dreams!  You go to sleep, or I’ll give you a dressing down.”  Sometimes he would hit her a great thwack with his open palm, or catch her hand and bite the tips of her fingers.  Trina would lie awake for hours afterward, crying softly to herself.  Then, by and by, “Mac,” she would say timidly.