Would you, therefore, that your physician heal the bodily
evil? How may this be unless you first lay open to him the wound
or trouble in your soul?"
"No, not to thee! not to an earthly physician!" cried Mr.
Dimmesdale, passionately, and turning his eyes, full and bright,
and with a kind of fierceness, on old Roger Chillingworth. "Not
to thee! But, if it be the soul's disease, then do I commit
myself to the one Physician of the soul! He, if it stand with
His good pleasure, can cure, or he can kill. Let Him do with me
as, in His justice and wisdom, He shall see good. But who art
thou, that meddlest in this matter? that dares thrust himself
between the sufferer and his God?"
With a frantic gesture he rushed out of the room.
"It is as well to have made this step," said Roger Chillingworth
to himself, looking after the minister, with a grave smile.
"There is nothing lost. We shall be friends again anon. But see,
now, how passion takes hold upon this man, and hurrieth him out
of himself! As with one passion so with another. He hath done a
wild thing ere now, this pious Master Dimmesdale, in the hot
passion of his heart.
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