She could find no room more reasonable than the one she and the dentist now occupied.
As time went on, McTeague's idleness became habitual.

He drank no more whiskey than at first, but his dislike for Trina increased with every day of their poverty, with every day of Trina's persistent stinginess.
At times--fortunately rare he was more than ever brutal to her.

He would box her ears or hit her a great blow with the back of a hair-brush, or even with his closed fist.

His old-time affection for his "little woman," unable to stand the test of privation, had lapsed by degrees, and what little of it was left was changed, distorted, and made monstrous by the alcohol.
The people about the house and the clerks at the provision stores often remarked that Trina's fingertips were swollen and the nails purple as though they had been shut in a door.

Indeed, this was the explanation she gave.