She assured them, too, of
her firm belief that, at some brighter period, when the world
should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth
would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation
between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness.
Earlier in life, Hester had vainly imagined that she herself
might be the destined prophetess, but had long since recognised
the impossibility that any mission of divine and mysterious
truth should be confided to a woman stained with sin, bowed down
with shame, or even burdened with a life-long sorrow. The angel
and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed,
but lofty, pure, and beautiful, and wise; moreover, not through
dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how
sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life
successful to such an end.
So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the
scarlet letter. And, after many, many years, a new grave was
delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside
which King's Chapel has since been built. It was near that old
and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of
the two sleepers had no right to mingle.
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