Besides this, the jealousy of Marcus Schouler harassed him.  Maria Macapa, coming into his “Parlor” to ask for junk, found him flung at length upon the bed-lounge, gnawing at his fingers in an excess of silent fury.  At lunch that day Marcus had told him of an excursion that was planned for the next Sunday afternoon.  Mr. Sieppe, Trina’s father, belonged to a rifle club that was to hold a meet at Schuetzen Park across the bay.  All the Sieppes were going; there was to be a basket picnic.  Marcus, as usual, was invited to be one of the party.  McTeague was in agony.  It was his first experience, and he suffered all the worse for it because he was totally unprepared.  What miserable complication was this in which he found himself involved?  It seemed so simple to him since he loved Trina to take her straight to himself, stopping at nothing, asking no questions, to have her, and by main strength to carry her far away somewhere, he did not know exactly where, to some vague country, some undiscovered place where every day was Sunday.

“Got any junk?”

“Huh?  What?  What is it?” exclaimed McTeague, suddenly rousing up from the lounge.  Often Maria did very well in the “Dental Parlors.”  McTeague was continually breaking things which he was too stupid to have mended; for him anything that was broken was lost.  Now it was a cuspidor, now a fire-shovel for the little stove, now a China shaving mug.

“Got any junk?”

“I don’t know—­I don’t remember,” muttered McTeague.  Maria roamed about the room, McTeague following her in his huge stockinged feet.  All at once she pounced upon a sheaf of old hand instruments in a coverless cigar-box, pluggers, hard bits, and excavators.  Maria had long coveted such a find in McTeague’s “Parlor,” knowing it should be somewhere about.  The instruments were of the finest tempered steel and really valuable.

“Say, Doctor, I can have these, can’t I?” exclaimed Maria.  “You got no more use for them.”  McTeague was not at all sure of this.  There were many in the sheaf that might be repaired, reshaped.

“No, no,” he said, wagging his head.  But Maria Macapa, knowing with whom she had to deal, at once let loose a torrent of words.  She made the dentist believe that he had no right to withhold them, that he had promised to save them for her.  She affected a great indignation, pursing her lips and putting her chin in the air as though wounded in some finer sense, changing so rapidly from one mood to another, filling the room with such shrill clamor, that McTeague was dazed and benumbed.

“Yes, all right, all right,” he said, trying to make himself heard.  “It would be mean.  I don’t want ’em.”  As he turned from her to pick up the box, Maria took advantage of the moment to steal three “mats” of sponge-gold out of the glass saucer.  Often she stole McTeague’s gold, almost under his very eyes; indeed, it was so easy to do so that there was but little pleasure in the theft.  Then Maria took herself off.  McTeague returned to the sofa and flung himself upon it face downward.