upon one shoulder, his face was red with sleep, and from
his open mouth came a terrific sound of snoring.

For a moment Trina stood looking at him as he lay thus, prone, inert,
half-dressed, and stupefied with the heat of the room, the steam beer,
and the fumes of the cheap tobacco. Then her little chin quivered and a
sob rose to her throat; she fled from the "Parlors," and locking herself
in her bedroom, flung herself on the bed and burst into an agony of
weeping. Ah, no, ah, no, she could not love him. It had all been a
dreadful mistake, and now it was irrevocable; she was bound to this
man for life. If it was as bad as this now, only three weeks after her
marriage, how would it be in the years to come? Year after year, month
after month, hour after hour, she was to see this same face, with its
salient jaw, was to feel the touch of those enormous red hands, was
to hear the heavy, elephantine tread of those huge feet--in thick gray
socks. Year after year, day after day, there would be no change, and
it would last all her life. Either it would be one long continued
revulsion, or else--worse than all--she would come to be content with
him, would come to be like him, would sink to the level of steam beer
and cheap tobacco, and all her pretty ways, her clean, trim little
habits, would be forgotten, since they would be thrown away upon
her stupid, brutish husband. "Her husband!" THAT, was her husband
in there--she could yet hear his snores--for life, for life. A great
despair seized upon her. She buried her face in the pillow and thought
of her mother with an infinite longing.

Aroused at length by the chittering of the canary, McTeague had awakened
slowly. After a while he had taken down his concertina and played upon
it the six very mournful airs that he knew.

Face downward upon the bed, Trina still wept. Throughout that little
suite could be heard but two sounds, the lugubrious strains of the
concertina and the noise of stifled weeping.

That her husband should be ignorant of her distress seemed to Trina an
additional grievance. With perverse inconsistency she began to wish
him to come to her, to comfort her. He ought to know that she was in
trouble, that she was lonely and unhappy.

"Oh, Mac," she called in a trembling voice. But the concertina still
continued to wail and lament. Then Trina wished she were dead, and
on the instant jumped up and ran into the "Dental Parlors," and threw
herself into her husband's ar