It was a positive persecution.

Every day his privacy was invaded.

He would complain to the landlady, he would.

He'd move out of the place." In the end he had given Maria seven empty whiskey flasks, an iron grate, and ten cents--the latter because he said she wore her hair like a girl he used to know.
After coming from Miss Baker's room Maria knocked at McTeague's door.
The dentist was lying on the bed-lounge in his stocking feet, doing nothing apparently, gazing up at the ceiling, lost in thought.
Since he had spoken to Trina Sieppe, asking her so abruptly to marry him, McTeague had passed a week of torment.

For him there was no going back.