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.