The dentist circled about that golden wonder, gasping with delight and stupefaction, touching it gingerly with his hands as if it were something sacred.  At every moment his thought returned to Trina.  No, never was there such a little woman as his—­the very thing he wanted—­how had she remembered?  And the money, where had that come from?  No one knew better than he how expensive were these signs; not another dentist on Polk Street could afford one.  Where, then, had Trina found the money?  It came out of her five thousand dollars, no doubt.

But what a wonderful, beautiful tooth it was, to be sure, bright as a mirror, shining there in its coat of French gilt, as if with a light of its own!  No danger of that tooth turning black with the weather, as did the cheap German gilt impostures.  What would that other dentist, that poser, that rider of bicycles, that courser of greyhounds, say when he should see this marvellous molar run out from McTeague’s bay window like a flag of defiance?  No doubt he would suffer veritable convulsions of envy; would be positively sick with jealousy.  If McTeague could only see his face at the moment!

For a whole hour the dentist sat there in his little “Parlor,” gazing ecstatically at his treasure, dazzled, supremely content.  The whole room took on a different aspect because of it.  The stone pug dog before the little stove reflected it in his protruding eyes; the canary woke and chittered feebly at this new gilt, so much brighter than the bars of its little prison.  Lorenzo de’ Medici, in the steel engraving, sitting in the heart of his court, seemed to ogle the thing out of the corner of one eye, while the brilliant colors of the unused rifle manufacturer’s calendar seemed to fade and pale in the brilliance of this greater glory.

At length, long after midnight, the dentist started to go to bed, undressing himself with his eyes still fixed on the great tooth.  All at once he heard Marcus Schouler’s foot on the stairs; he started up with his fists clenched, but immediately dropped back upon the bed-lounge with a gesture of indifference.

He was in no truculent state of mind now.  He could not reinstate himself in that mood of wrath wherein he had left the corner grocery.  The tooth had changed all that.  What was Marcus Schouler’s hatred to him, who had Trina’s affection?  What did he care about a broken pipe now that he had the tooth?  Let him go.  As Frenna said, he was not worth it.  He heard Marcus come out into the hall, shouting aggrievedly to anyone within sound of his voice: 

“An’ now he breaks into my room—­into my room, by damn!  How do I know how many things he’s stolen?  It’s come to stealing from me, now, has it?” He went into his room, banging his splintered door.

McTeague looked upward at the ceiling, in the direction of the voice, muttering: 

“Ah, go to bed, you.”

He went to bed himself, turning out the gas, but leaving the window-curtains up so that he could see the tooth the last thing before he went to sleep and the first thing as he arose in the morning.