Did she love McTeague?  Difficult question.  Did she choose him for better or for worse, deliberately, of her own free will, or was Trina herself allowed even a choice in the taking of that step that was to make or mar her life?  The Woman is awakened, and, starting from her sleep, catches blindly at what first her newly opened eyes light upon.  It is a spell, a witchery, ruled by chance alone, inexplicable—­a fairy queen enamored of a clown with ass’s ears.

McTeague had awakened the Woman, and, whether she would or no, she was his now irrevocably; struggle against it as she would, she belonged to him, body and soul, for life or for death.  She had not sought it, she had not desired it.  The spell was laid upon her.  Was it a blessing?  Was it a curse?  It was all one; she was his, indissolubly, for evil or for good.

And he?  The very act of submission that bound the woman to him forever had made her seem less desirable in his eyes.  Their undoing had already begun.  Yet neither of them was to blame.  From the first they had not sought each other.  Chance had brought them face to face, and mysterious instincts as ungovernable as the winds of heaven were at work knitting their lives together.  Neither of them had asked that this thing should be—­that their destinies, their very souls, should be the sport of chance.  If they could have known, they would have shunned the fearful risk.  But they were allowed no voice in the matter.  Why should it all be?

It had been on a Wednesday that the scene in the B Street station had taken place.  Throughout the rest of the week, at every hour of the day, Trina asked herself the same question:  “Do I love him?  Do I really love him?  Is this what love is like?” As she recalled McTeague—­recalled his huge, square-cut head, his salient jaw, his shock of yellow hair, his heavy, lumbering body, his slow wits—­she found little to admire in him beyond his physical strength, and at such moments she shook her head decisively.  “No, surely she did not love him.”  Sunday afternoon, however, McTeague called.  Trina had prepared a little speech for him.  She was to tell him that she did not know what had been the matter with her that Wednesday afternoon; that she had acted like a bad girl; that she did not love him well enough to marry him; that she had told him as much once before.

McTeague saw her alone in the little front parlor.  The instant she appeared he came straight towards her.  She saw what he was bent upon doing.  “Wait a minute,” she cried, putting out her hands.  “Wait.  You don’t understand.  I have got something to say to you.”  She might as well have talked to the wind.  McTeague put aside her hands with a single gesture, and gripped her to him in a bearlike embrace that all but smothered her.  Trina was but a reed before that giant strength.  McTeague turned her face to his and kissed her again upon the mouth.  Where was all Trina’s resolve then?  Where was her carefully prepared little speech?  Where was all her hesitation and torturing doubts of the last few days?  She clasped McTeague’s huge red neck with both her slender arms; she raised her adorable little chin and kissed him in return, exclaiming:  “Oh, I do love you!  I do love you!” Never afterward were the two so happy as at that moment.