One evening as he reached home after such a tramp, he was surprised to find Trina standing in front of what had been Zerkow’s house, looking at it thoughtfully, her finger on her lips.

“What you doing here’?” growled the dentist as he came up.  There was a “Rooms-to-let” sign on the street door of the house.

“Now we’ve found a place to move to,” exclaimed Trina.

“What?” cried McTeague.  “There, in that dirty house, where you found Maria?”

“I can’t afford that room in the flat any more, now that you can’t get any work to do.”

“But there’s where Zerkow killed Maria—­the very house—­an’ you wake up an’ squeal in the night just thinking of it.”

“I know.  I know it will be bad at first, but I’ll get used to it, an’ it’s just half again as cheap as where we are now.  I was looking at a room; we can have it dirt cheap.  It’s a back room over the kitchen.  A German family are going to take the front part of the house and sublet the rest.  I’m going to take it.  It’ll be money in my pocket.”

“But it won’t be any in mine,” vociferated the dentist, angrily.  “I’ll have to live in that dirty rat hole just so’s you can save money.  I ain’t any the better off for it.”

“Find work to do, and then we’ll talk,” declared Trina.  “I’m going to save up some money against a rainy day; and if I can save more by living here I’m going to do it, even if it is the house Maria was killed in.  I don’t care.”

“All right,” said McTeague, and did not make any further protest.  His wife looked at him surprised.  She could not understand this sudden acquiescence.  Perhaps McTeague was so much away from home of late that he had ceased to care where or how he lived.  But this sudden change troubled her a little for all that.

The next day the McTeagues moved for a second time.  It did not take them long.  They were obliged to buy the bed from the landlady, a circumstance which nearly broke Trina’s heart; and this bed, a couple of chairs, Trina’s trunk, an ornament or two, the oil stove, and some plates and kitchen ware were all that they could call their own now; and this back room in that wretched house with its grisly memories, the one window looking out into a grimy maze of back yards and broken sheds, was what they now knew as their home.

The McTeagues now began to sink rapidly lower and lower.  They became accustomed to their surroundings.  Worst of all, Trina lost her pretty ways and her good looks.  The combined effects of hard work, avarice, poor food, and her husband’s brutalities told on her swiftly.  Her charming little figure grew coarse, stunted, and dumpy.  She who had once been of a catlike neatness, now slovened all day about the room in a dirty flannel wrapper, her slippers clap-clapping after her as she walked.  At last she even neglected her hair, the wonderful swarthy tiara, the coiffure of a queen, that shaded her little pale forehead.  In the morning she braided it before it was half combed, and piled and coiled it about her head in haphazard fashion.  It came down half a dozen times a day; by evening it was an unkempt, tangled mass, a veritable rat’s nest.