It would come upon her all of a sudden.  While she was about her work, scrubbing the floor of some vacant house; or in her room, in the morning, as she made her coffee on the oil stove, or when she woke in the night, a brusque access of cupidity would seize upon her.  Her cheeks flushed, her eyes glistened, her breath came short.  At times she would leave her work just as it was, put on her old bonnet of black straw, throw her shawl about her, and go straight to Uncle Oelbermann’s store and draw against her money.  Now it would be a hundred dollars, now sixty; now she would content herself with only twenty; and once, after a fortnight’s abstinence, she permitted herself a positive debauch of five hundred.  Little by little she drew her capital from Uncle Oelbermann, and little by little her original interest of twenty-five dollars a month dwindled.

One day she presented herself again in the office of the whole-sale toy store.

“Will you let me have a check for two hundred dollars, Uncle Oelbermann?” she said.

The great man laid down his fountain pen and leaned back in his swivel chair with great deliberation.

“I don’t understand, Mrs. McTeague,” he said.  “Every week you come here and draw out a little of your money.  I’ve told you that it is not at all regular or business-like for me to let you have it this way.  And more than this, it’s a great inconvenience to me to give you these checks at unstated times.  If you wish to draw out the whole amount let’s have some understanding.  Draw it in monthly installments of, say, five hundred dollars, or else,” he added, abruptly, “draw it all at once, now, to-day.  I would even prefer it that way.  Otherwise it’s—­it’s annoying.  Come, shall I draw you a check for thirty-seven hundred, and have it over and done with?”

“No, no,” cried Trina, with instinctive apprehension, refusing, she did not know why.  “No, I’ll leave it with you.  I won’t draw out any more.”

She took her departure, but paused on the pavement outside the store, and stood for a moment lost in thought, her eyes beginning to glisten and her breath coming short.  Slowly she turned about and reentered the store; she came back into the office, and stood trembling at the corner of Uncle Oelbermann’s desk.  He looked up sharply.  Twice Trina tried to get her voice, and when it did come to her, she could hardly recognize it.  Between breaths she said: 

“Yes, all right—­I’ll—­you can give me—­will you give me a check for thirty-seven hundred?  Give me all of my money.”

A few hours later she entered her little room over the kindergarten, bolted the door with shaking fingers, and emptied a heavy canvas sack upon the middle of her bed.  Then she opened her trunk, and taking thence the brass match-box and chamois-skin bag added their contents to the pile.  Next she laid herself upon the bed and gathered the gleaming heaps of gold pieces to her with both arms, burying her face in them with long sighs of unspeakable delight.