One Sunday, a few days after Trina’s last sitting, McTeague met Marcus Schouler at his table in the car conductors’ coffee-joint, next to the harness shop.

“What you got to do this afternoon, Mac?” inquired the other, as they ate their suet pudding.

“Nothing, nothing,” replied McTeague, shaking his head.  His mouth was full of pudding.  It made him warm to eat, and little beads of perspiration stood across the bridge of his nose.  He looked forward to an afternoon passed in his operating chair as usual.  On leaving his “Parlors” he had put ten cents into his pitcher and had left it at Frenna’s to be filled.

“What do you say we take a walk, huh?” said Marcus.  “Ah, that’s the thing—­a walk, a long walk, by damn!  It’ll be outa sight.  I got to take three or four of the dogs out for exercise, anyhow.  Old Grannis thinks they need ut.  We’ll walk out to the Presidio.”

Of late it had become the custom of the two friends to take long walks from time to time.  On holidays and on those Sunday afternoons when Marcus was not absent with the Sieppes they went out together, sometimes to the park, sometimes to the Presidio, sometimes even across the bay.  They took a great pleasure in each other’s company, but silently and with reservation, having the masculine horror of any demonstration of friendship.

They walked for upwards of five hours that afternoon, out the length of California Street, and across the Presidio Reservation to the Golden Gate.  Then they turned, and, following the line of the shore, brought up at the Cliff House.  Here they halted for beer, Marcus swearing that his mouth was as dry as a hay-bin.  Before starting on their walk they had gone around to the little dog hospital, and Marcus had let out four of the convalescents, crazed with joy at the release.

“Look at that dog,” he cried to McTeague, showing him a finely-bred Irish setter.  “That’s the dog that belonged to the duck on the avenue, the dog we called for that day.  I’ve bought ’um.  The duck thought he had the distemper, and just threw ’um away.  Nothun wrong with ’um but a little catarrh.  Ain’t he a bird?  Say, ain’t he a bird?  Look at his flag; it’s perfect; and see how he carries his tail on a line with his back.  See how stiff and white his whiskers are.  Oh, by damn! you can’t fool me on a dog.  That dog’s a winner.”

At the Cliff House the two sat down to their beer in a quiet corner of the billiard-room.  There were but two players.  Somewhere in another part of the building a mammoth music-box was jangling out a quickstep.  From outside came the long, rhythmical rush of the surf and the sonorous barking of the seals upon the seal rocks.  The four dogs curled themselves down upon the sanded floor.

“Here’s how,” said Marcus, half emptying his glass.  “Ah-h!” he added, with a long breath, “that’s good; it is, for a fact.”

For the last hour of their walk Marcus had done nearly all the talking.  McTeague merely answering him by uncertain movements of the head.  For that matter, the dentist had been silent and preoccupied throughout the whole afternoon.  At length Marcus noticed it.  As he set down his glass with a bang he suddenly exclaimed: