This poor crude dentist of Polk Street, stupid,
ignorant, vulgar, with his sham education and plebeian tastes, whose
only relaxations were to eat, to drink steam beer, and to play upon his
concertina, was living through his first romance, his first idyl. It
was delightful. The long hours he passed alone with Trina in the "Dental
Parlors," silent, only for the scraping of the instruments and the
pouring of bud-burrs in the engine, in the foul atmosphere, overheated
by the little stove and heavy with the smell of ether, creosote, and
stale bedding, had all the charm of secret appointments and stolen
meetings under the moon.
By degrees the operation progressed. One day, just after McTeague had
put in the temporary gutta-percha fillings and nothing more could be
done at that sitting, Trina asked him to examine the rest of her teeth.
They were perfect, with one exception--a spot of white caries on the
lateral surface of an incisor. McTeague filled it with gold, enlarging
the cavity with hard-bits and hoe-excavators, and burring in afterward
with half-cone burrs. The cavity was deep, and Trina began to wince and
moan. To hurt Trina was a positive anguish for McTeague, yet an anguish
which he was obliged to endure at every hour of the sitting.
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