ltogether broken out.

McTeague listened to her with apparent stolidity, nodding his head from
time to time as she spoke. The keenness of his dislike of her as a woman
began to be blunted. He thought she was rather pretty, that he even
liked her because she was so small, so prettily made, so good natured
and straightforward.

"Let's have a look at your teeth," he said, picking up his mirror. "You
better take your hat off." She leaned back in her chair and opened her
mouth, showing the rows of little round teeth, as white and even as the
kernels on an ear of green corn, except where an ugly gap came at the
side.

McTeague put the mirror into her mouth, touching one and another of her
teeth with the handle of an excavator. By and by he straightened up,
wiping the moisture from the mirror on his coat-sleeve.

"Well, Doctor," said the girl, anxiously, "it's a dreadful
disfigurement, isn't it?" adding, "What can you do about it?"

"Well," answered McTeague, slowly, looking vaguely about on the floor of
the room, "the roots of the broken tooth are still in the gum; they'll
have to come out, and I guess I'll have to pull that other bicuspid. Let
me look again. Yes," he went on in a moment, peering into her mouth
with the mirror, "I guess that'll have to come out, too." The tooth was
loose, discolored, and evidently dead. "It's a curious case," McTeague
went on. "I don't know as I ever had a tooth like that before. It's
what's called necrosis. It don't often happen. It'll have to come out
sure."

Then a discussion was opened on the subject, Trina sitting up in the
chair, holding her hat in her lap; McTeague leaning against the window
frame his hands in his pockets, his eyes wandering about on the floor.
Trina did not want the other tooth removed; one hole like that was bad
enough; but two--ah, no, it was not to be thought of.

But McTeague reasoned with her, tried in vain to make her understand
that there was no vascular connection between the root and the gum.
Trina was blindly persistent, with the persistency of a girl who has
made up her mind.

McTeague began to like her better and better, and after a while
commenced himself to feel that it would be a pity to disfigure such
a pretty mouth. He became interested; perhaps he could do something,
something in the way of a crown or bridge. "Let's look at that again,"
he said, picking up his mirror. He began to study the situation very
carefully, really desiring to remedy