The kindergarten was not large.  On the lower floor were but two rooms, the main schoolroom and another room, a cloakroom, very small, where the children hung their hats and coats.  This cloakroom opened off the back of the main schoolroom.  Trina cast a critical glance into both of these rooms.  There had been a great deal of going and coming in them during the day, and she decided that the first thing to do would be to scrub the floors.  She went up again to her room overhead and heated some water over her oil stove; then, re-descending, set to work vigorously.

By nine o’clock she had almost finished with the schoolroom.  She was down on her hands and knees in the midst of a steaming muck of soapy water.  On her feet were a pair of man’s shoes fastened with buckles; a dirty cotton gown, damp with the water, clung about her shapeless, stunted figure.  From time to time she sat back on her heels to ease the strain of her position, and with one smoking hand, white and parboiled with the hot water, brushed her hair, already streaked with gray, out of her weazened, pale face and the corners of her mouth.

It was very quiet.  A gas-jet without a globe lit up the place with a crude, raw light.  The cat who lived on the premises, preferring to be dirty rather than to be wet, had got into the coal scuttle, and over its rim watched her sleepily with a long, complacent purr.

All at once he stopped purring, leaving an abrupt silence in the air like the sudden shutting off of a stream of water, while his eyes grew wide, two lambent disks of yellow in the heap of black fur.

“Who is there?” cried Trina, sitting back on her heels.  In the stillness that succeeded, the water dripped from her hands with the steady tick of a clock.  Then a brutal fist swung open the street door of the schoolroom and McTeague came in.  He was drunk; not with that drunkenness which is stupid, maudlin, wavering on its feet, but with that which is alert, unnaturally intelligent, vicious, perfectly steady, deadly wicked.  Trina only had to look once at him, and in an instant, with some strange sixth sense, born of the occasion, knew what she had to expect.

She jumped up and ran from him into the little cloakroom.  She locked and bolted the door after her, and leaned her weight against it, panting and trembling, every nerve shrinking and quivering with the fear of him.

McTeague put his hand on the knob of the door outside and opened it, tearing off the lock and bolt guard, and sending her staggering across the room.

“Mac,” she cried to him, as he came in, speaking with horrid rapidity, cringing and holding out her hands, “Mac, listen.  Wait a minute—­look here—­listen here.  It wasn’t my fault.  I’ll give you some money.  You can come back.  I’ll do anything you want.  Won’t you just listen to me?  Oh, don’t!  I’ll scream.  I can’t help it, you know.  The people will hear.”

McTeague came towards her slowly, his immense feet dragging and grinding on the floor; his enormous fists, hard as wooden mallets, swinging at his sides.  Trina backed from him to the corner of the room, cowering before him, holding her elbow crooked in front of her face, watching him with fearful intentness, ready to dodge.