his pale, weak, sinful, and sorrow-stricken man was what Hester could
not bear and live!

"Wilt thou yet forgive me?" she repeated, over and over again. "Wilt
thou not frown? Wilt thou forgive?"

"I do forgive you, Hester," replied the minister, at length, with a
deep utterance, out of an abyss of sadness, but no anger. "I freely
forgive you now. May God forgive us both! We are not, Hester, the
worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted
priest! That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has
violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I,
Hester, never did so!"

"Never, never!" whispered she. "What we did had a consecration of its
own. We felt it so! We said so to each other! Hast thou forgotten it?"

"Hush, Hester!" said Arthur Dimmesdale, rising from the ground. "No; I
have not forgotten!"

They sat down again, side by side, and hand clasped in hand, on the
mossy trunk of the fallen tree. Life had never brought them a gloomier
hour; it was the point whither their pathway had so long been tending,
and darkening ever, as it stole along;--and yet it enclosed a charm
that made them linger upon it, and claim another, and another, and,
after all, another moment. The forest was obscure around them, and
creaked with a blast that was passing through it. The boughs were
tossing heavily above their heads; while one solemn old tree groaned
dolefully to another, as if telling the sad story of the pair that sat
beneath, or constrained to forebode evil to come.

And yet they lingered. How dreary looked the forest-track that led
backward to the settlement, where Hester Prynne must take up again the
burden of her ignominy, and the minister the hollow mockery of his
good name! So they lingered an instant longer. No golden light had
ever been so precious as the gloom of this dark forest. Here, seen
only by his eyes, the scarlet letter need not burn into the bosom of
the fallen woman! Here, seen only by her eyes, Arthur Dimmesdale,
false to God and man, might be, for one moment, true!

He started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him.

"Hester," cried he, "here is a new horror! Roger Chillingworth knows
your purpose to reveal his true character. Will he continue, then, to
keep our secret? What will now be the course of his revenge?"

"There is a strange secrecy in his nature," replied Hester,
thoughtfully; "and it has grown upon him by the hidden practices of
his