e cars trundled up and down,
thumping heavily over the joints of the rails; market carts by the score
came and went, driven at a great rate by preoccupied young men in their
shirt sleeves, with pencils behind their ears, or by reckless boys in
blood-stained butcher's aprons. Upon the sidewalks the little world of
Polk Street swarmed and jostled through its daily round of life. On
fine days the great ladies from the avenue, one block above, invaded
the street, appearing before the butcher stalls, intent upon their day's
marketing. On rainy days their servants--the Chinese cooks or the second
girls--took their places. These servants gave themselves great airs,
carrying their big cotton umbrellas as they had seen their mistresses
carry their parasols, and haggling in supercilious fashion with the
market men, their chins in the air.

The rain persisted. Everything in the range of Trina's vision, from the
tarpaulins on the market-cart horses to the panes of glass in the roof
of the public baths, looked glazed and varnished. The asphalt of the
sidewalks shone like the surface of a patent leather boot; every hollow
in the street held its little puddle, that winked like an eye each time
a drop of rain struck into it.

Trina still continued to work for Uncle Oelbermann. In the mornings she
busied herself about the kitchen, the bedroom, and the sitting-room; but
in the afternoon, for two or three hours after lunch, she was occupied
with the Noah's ark animals. She took her work to the bay window,
spreading out a great square of canvas underneath her chair, to catch
the chips and shavings, which she used afterwards for lighting fires.
One after another she caught up the little blocks of straight-grained
pine, the knife flashed between her fingers, the little figure grew
rapidly under her touch, was finished and ready for painting in a
wonderfully short time, and was tossed into the basket that stood at her
elbow.

But very often during that rainy winter after her marriage Trina would
pause in her work, her hands falling idly into her lap, her eyes--her
narrow, pale blue eyes--growing wide and thoughtful as she gazed,
unseeing, out into the rain-washed street.

She loved McTeague now with a blind, unreasoning love that admitted of
no doubt or hesitancy. Indeed, it seemed to her that it was only AFTER
her marriage with the dentist that she had really begun to love him.
With the absolute final surrender of herself, the irrevocabl