The fact of the matter was that McTeague, when he had been drinking, used to bite them, crunching and grinding them with his immense teeth, always ingenious enough to remember which were the sorest.

Sometimes he extorted money from her by this means, but as often as not he did it for his own satisfaction.
And in some strange, inexplicable way this brutality made Trina all the more affectionate; aroused in her a morbid, unwholesome love of submission, a strange, unnatural pleasure in yielding, in surrendering herself to the will of an irresistible, virile power.
Trina's emotions had narrowed with the narrowing of her daily life.

They reduced themselves at last to but two, her passion for her money and her perverted love for her husband when he was brutal.

She was a strange woman during these days.
Trina had come to be on very intimate terms with Maria Macapa, and in the end the dentist's wife and the maid of all work became great friends.

Maria was constantly in and out of Trina's room, and, whenever she could, Trina threw a shawl over her head and returned Maria's calls.
Trina could reach Zerkow's dirty house without going into the street.
The back yard of the flat had a gate that opened into a little inclosure where Zerkow kept his decrepit horse and ramshackle wagon, and from thence Trina could enter directly into Maria's kitchen.