Not
the less, however, came this importunately obtrusive sense of
change. The same was true as regarded the acquaintances whom he
met, and all the well-known shapes of human life, about the
little town. They looked neither older nor younger now; the
beards of the aged were no whiter, nor could the creeping babe
of yesterday walk on his feet to-day; it was impossible to
describe in what respect they differed from the individuals on
whom he had so recently bestowed a parting glance; and yet the
minister's deepest sense seemed to inform him of their
mutability. A similar impression struck him most remarkably as
he passed under the walls of his own church. The edifice had so
very strange, and yet so familiar an aspect, that Mr.
Dimmesdale's mind vibrated between two ideas; either that he had
seen it only in a dream hitherto, or that he was merely dreaming
about it now.
This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed,
indicated no external change, but so sudden and important a
change in the spectator of the familiar scene, that the
intervening space of a single day had operated on his
consciousness like the lapse of years.
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