But there is a fatality, a
feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of
doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger
around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and
marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, still
the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her
sin, her ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the
soil. It was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than
the first, had converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial
to every other pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild
and dreary, but life-long home. All other scenes of earth--even
that village of rural England, where happy infancy and stainless
maidenhood seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, like
garments put off long ago--were foreign to her, in comparison.
The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to
her inmost soul, but could never be broken.
It might be, too--doubtless it was so, although she hid the
secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of
her heart, like a serpent from its hole--it might be that
another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had
been so fatal.
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