ound.

For another moment Trina stood leaning over the banisters, looking
down into the empty stairway. It was dark. There was nobody. They--her
father, her mother, the children--had left her, left her alone. She
faced about toward the rooms--faced her husband, faced her new home, the
new life that was to begin now.

The hall was empty and deserted. The great flat around her seemed new
and huge and strange; she felt horribly alone. Even Maria and the hired
waiter were gone. On one of the floors above she heard a baby crying.
She stood there an instant in the dark hall, in her wedding finery,
looking about her, listening. From the open door of the sitting-room
streamed a gold bar of light.

She went down the hall, by the open door of the sitting-room, going on
toward the hall door of the bedroom.

As she softly passed the sitting-room she glanced hastily in. The lamps
and the gas were burning brightly, the chairs were pushed back from the
table just as the guests had left them, and the table itself, abandoned,
deserted, presented to view the vague confusion of its dishes, its
knives and forks, its empty platters and crumpled napkins. The dentist
sat there leaning on his elbows, his back toward her; against the white
blur of the table he looked colossal. Above his giant shoulders rose his
thick, red neck and mane of yellow hair. The light shone pink through
the gristle of his enormous ears.

Trina entered the bedroom, closing the door after her. At the sound, she
heard McTeague start and rise.

"Is that you, Trina?"

She did not answer; but paused in the middle of the room, holding her
breath, trembling.

The dentist crossed the outside room, parted the chenille portieres,
and came in. He came toward her quickly, making as if to take her in his
arms. His eyes were alight.

"No, no," cried Trina, shrinking from him. Suddenly seized with the fear
of him--the intuitive feminine fear of the male--her whole being
quailed before him. She was terrified at his huge, square-cut head; his
powerful, salient jaw; his huge, red hands; his enormous, resistless
strength.

"No, no--I'm afraid," she cried, drawing back from him to the other side
of the room.

"Afraid?" answered the dentist in perplexity. "What are you afraid of,
Trina? I'm not going to hurt you. What are you afraid of?"

What, indeed, was Trina afraid of? She could not tell. But what did she
know of McTeague, after all? Who was this man that had come into