But McTeague could not understand this thing. It had faced him, as
sooner or later it faces every child of man; but its significance was
not for him. To reason with it was beyond him. He could only oppose to
it an instinctive stubborn resistance, blind, inert.

McTeague went on with his work. As he was rapping in the little blocks
and cylinders with the mallet, Trina slowly came back to herself with a
long sigh. She still felt a little confused, and lay quiet in the chair.
There was a long silence, broken only by the uneven tapping of the
hardwood mallet. By and by she said, "I never felt a thing," and then
she smiled at him very prettily beneath the rubber dam. McTeague turned
to her suddenly, his mallet in one hand, his pliers holding a pellet
of sponge-gold in the other. All at once he said, with the unreasoned
simplicity and directness of a child: "Listen here, Miss Trina, I
like you better than any one else; what's the matter with us getting
married?"

Trina sat up in the chair quickly, and then drew back from him,
frightened and bewildered.

"Will you? Will you?" said McTeague. "Say, Miss Trina, will you?"

"What is it? What do you mean?" she cried, confusedly, her words muffled
beneath the rubber.

"Will you?" repeated McTeague.

"No, no," she exclaimed, refusing without knowing why, suddenly seized
with a fear of him, the intuitive feminine fear of the male. McTeague
could only repeat the same thing over and over again. Trina, more