Throwing his eyes
anxiously in the direction of the voice, he indistinctly beheld
a form under the trees, clad in garments so sombre, and so
little relieved from the gray twilight into which the clouded
sky and the heavy foliage had darkened the noontide, that he
knew not whether it were a woman or a shadow. It may be that his
pathway through life was haunted thus by a spectre that had
stolen out from among his thoughts.
He made a step nigher, and discovered the scarlet letter.
"Hester! Hester Prynne!", said he; "is it thou? Art thou in
life?"
"Even so." she answered. "In such life as has been mine these
seven years past! And thou, Arthur Dimmesdale, dost thou yet
live?"
It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another's actual
and bodily existence, and even doubted of their own. So
strangely did they meet in the dim wood that it was like the
first encounter in the world beyond the grave of two spirits who
had been intimately connected in their former life, but now
stood coldly shuddering in mutual dread, as not yet familiar
with their state, nor wonted to the companionship of disembodied
beings.
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