There in that cheap and shabby "Dental Parlor" a dreaded struggle began.

It was the old battle, old as the world, wide as the world--the sudden panther leap of the animal, lips drawn, fangs aflash, hideous, monstrous, not to be resisted, and the simultaneous arousing of the other man, the better self that cries, "Down, down," without knowing why; that grips the monster; that fights to strangle it, to thrust it down and back.
Dizzied and bewildered with the shock, the like of which he had never known before, McTeague turned from Trina, gazing bewilderedly about the room.

The struggle was bitter; his teeth ground themselves together with a little rasping sound; the blood sang in his ears; his face flushed scarlet; his hands twisted themselves together like the knotting of cables.

The fury in him was as the fury of a young bull in the heat of high summer.

But for all that he shook his huge head from time to time, muttering: "No, by God! No, by God!" Dimly he seemed to realize that should he yield now he would never be able to care for Trina again.