After a while they began walking up and down the tracks, McTeague talking about his profession, Trina listening, very interested and absorbed, trying to understand.

“For pulling the roots of the upper molars we use the cowhorn forceps,” continued the dentist, monotonously.  “We get the inside beak over the palatal roots and the cow-horn beak over the buccal roots—­that’s the roots on the outside, you see.  Then we close the forceps, and that breaks right through the alveolus—­that’s the part of the socket in the jaw, you understand.”

At another moment he told her of his one unsatisfied desire.  “Some day I’m going to have a big gilded tooth outside my window for a sign.  Those big gold teeth are beautiful, beautiful—­only they cost so much, I can’t afford one just now.”

“Oh, it’s raining,” suddenly exclaimed Trina, holding out her palm.  They turned back and reached the station in a drizzle.  The afternoon was closing in dark and rainy.  The tide was coming back, talking and lapping for miles along the mud bank.  Far off across the flats, at the edge of the town, an electric car went by, stringing out a long row of diamond sparks on the overhead wires.

“Say, Miss Trina,” said McTeague, after a while, “what’s the good of waiting any longer?  Why can’t us two get married?”

Trina still shook her head, saying “No” instinctively, in spite of herself.

“Why not?” persisted McTeague.  “Don’t you like me well enough?”

“Yes.”

“Then why not?”

“Because.”

“Ah, come on,” he said, but Trina still shook her head.

“Ah, come on,” urged McTeague.  He could think of nothing else to say, repeating the same phrase over and over again to all her refusals.

“Ah, come on!  Ah, come on!”

Suddenly he took her in his enormous arms, crushing down her struggle with his immense strength.  Then Trina gave up, all in an instant, turning her head to his.  They kissed each other, grossly, full in the mouth.

A roar and a jarring of the earth suddenly grew near and passed them in a reek of steam and hot air.  It was the Overland, with its flaming headlight, on its way across the continent.

The passage of the train startled them both.  Trina struggled to free herself from McTeague.  “Oh, please! please!” she pleaded, on the point of tears.  McTeague released her, but in that moment a slight, a barely perceptible, revulsion of feeling had taken place in him.  The instant that Trina gave up, the instant she allowed him to kiss her, he thought less of her.  She was not so desirable, after all.  But this reaction was so faint, so subtle, so intangible, that in another moment he had doubted its occurrence.  Yet afterward it returned.  Was there not something gone from Trina now?  Was he not disappointed in her for doing that very thing for which he had longed?  Was Trina the submissive, the compliant, the attainable