There dwelt, there trode, the feet of one with
whom she deemed herself connected in a union that, unrecognised
on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final
judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint
futurity of endless retribution. Over and over again, the
tempter of souls had thrust this idea upon Hester's
contemplation, and laughed at the passionate and desperate joy
with which she seized, and then strove to cast it from her. She
barely looked the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it in
its dungeon. What she compelled herself to believe--what,
finally, she reasoned upon as her motive for continuing a
resident of New England--was half a truth, and half a
self-delusion. Here, she said to herself had been the scene of
her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly
punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame
would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than
that which she had lost: more saint-like, because the result of
martyrdom.
Hester Prynne, therefore, did not flee. On the outskirts of the
town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close
vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched
cottage.
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