ms, crying: "Oh, Mac, dear, love me, love
me big! I'm so unhappy."

"What--what--what--" the dentist exclaimed, starting up bewildered, a
little frightened.

"Nothing, nothing, only LOVE me, love me always and always."

But this first crisis, this momentary revolt, as much a matter of
high-strung feminine nerves as of anything else, passed, and in the end
Trina's affection for her "old bear" grew in spite of herself. She began
to love him more and more, not for what he was, but for what she had
given up to him. Only once again did Trina undergo a reaction against
her husband, and then it was but the matter of an instant, brought
on, curiously enough, by the sight of a bit of egg on McTeague's heavy
mustache one morning just after breakfast.

Then, too, the pair had learned to make concessions, little by little,
and all unconsciously they adapted their modes of life to suit each
other. Instead of sinking to McTeague's level as she had feared, Trina
found that she could make McTeague rise to hers, and in this saw a
solution of many a difficult and gloomy complication.

For one thing, the dentist began to dress a little better, Trina even
succeeding in inducing him to wear a high silk hat and a frock coat of
a Sunday. Next he relinquished his Sunday afternoon's nap and beer in
favor of three or four hours spent in the park with her--the weather
permitting. So that gradually Trina's misgivings ceased, or when
they did assail her, she could at last meet them with a shrug of the
shoulders, saying to herself meanwhile, "Well, it's done now and it
can't be helped; one must make the best of it."

During the first months of their married life these nervous relapses of
hers had alternated with brusque outbursts of affection when her only
fear was that her husband's love did not equal her own. Without an
instant's warning, she would clasp him about the neck, rubbing her cheek
against his, murmuring:

"Dear old Mac, I love you so, I love you so. Oh, aren't we happy
together, Mac, just us two and no one else? You love me as much as I
love you, don't you, Mac? Oh, if you shouldn't--if you SHOULDN'T."

But by the middle of the winter Trina's emotions, oscillating at first
from one extreme to another, commenced to settle themselves to an
equilibrium of calmness and placid quietude. Her household duties
began more and more to absorb her attention, for she was an admirable
housekeeper, keeping the little suite in marvellous good