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.

A little later in that same week, when Marcus and McTeague were
taking lunch at the car conductors' coffee-joint, the former suddenly
exclaimed:

"Say, Mac, now that you've got Trina, you ought to do more for her. By
damn! you ought to, for a fact. Why don't you take her out somewhere--to
the theatre, or somewhere? You ain't on to your job."

Naturally, McTeague had told Marcus of his success with Trina. Marcus
had taken on a grand air.

"You've got her, have you? Well, I'm glad of it, old man. I am, for a
fact. I know you'll be happy with her. I know how I would have been. I
forgive you; yes, I forgive you, freely."