It seemed to him a signal, an invitation.

He drew his chair close to his side of the partition, before his work-table.

A pile of half-bound "Nations" was in the little binding apparatus; he threaded his huge upholsterer's needle with stout twine and set to work.
It was their tete-a-tete.

Instinctively they felt each other's presence, felt each other's thought coming to them through the thin partition.
It was charming; they were perfectly happy.

There in the stillness that settled over the flat in the half hour after midnight the two old people "kept company," enjoying after their fashion their little romance that had come so late into the lives of each.
On the way to her room in the garret Maria Macapa paused under the single gas-jet that burned at the top of the well of the staircase; she assured herself that she was alone, and then drew from her pocket one of McTeague's "tapes" of non-cohesive gold.