The days passed. McTeague had finished the operation on Trina's teeth.
She did not come any more to the "Parlors." Matters had readjusted
themselves a little between the two during the last sittings. Trina yet
stood upon her reserve, and McTeague still felt himself shambling and
ungainly in her presence; but that constraint and embarrassment that
had followed upon McTeague's blundering declaration broke up little by
little. In spite of themselves they were gradually resuming the same
relative positions they had occupied when they had first met.

But McTeague suffered miserably for all that. He never would have
Trina, he saw that clearly. She was too good for him; too delicate, too
refined, too prettily made for him, who was so coarse, so enormous, so
stupid. She was for someone else--Marcus, no doubt--or at least for some
finer-grained man. She should have gone to some other dentist; the young
fellow on the corner, for instance, the poser, the rider of bicycles,
the courser of grey-hounds. McTeague began to loathe and to envy this
fellow. He spied upon him going in and out of his office, and noted his
salmon-pink neckties and his astonishing waistcoats.

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