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PARTISAN REVIEW
which hope and joy shone out, indeed, but with fear between
them, and a kind of horror at her boldness, who had spoken what
he vaguely hinted at but dared not speak.
But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activ·
ity, and for so .long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed
from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of specula·
tion as was altogether foreign to the clergyman.... For years
past she had looked from this estranged point of view at human
institutions, and whatever priests or legislators had established.
. . . The tendency of her fate has been to set her free.
"Thou wilt go," said Hester, calmly, as he met her glance.
The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw
its flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. It was
the exhilarating effect-upon a prisoner just escaped from the
dungeon of his own heart- of breathing the wild, free atmos·
phere of an unredeemed, unchristianized, lawless region....
"Do I feel joy again?" cried he, wondering at himself.
"Methinks the germ of it was dead in me! 0, Hester, thou art my
better angel! I seem to have flung myself-sick, sin-stained, and
sorrow-blackened--down upon these forest-leaves, and to have
risen up all made anew, and with new powers to glorify Him that
hath been merciful! This is already the better life. Why did we
not find it sooner?"
"Let us not look back,'' answered Hester Prynne. "The past
is gone! ... See! With this symbol I undo it all, and make it as
it had never been!"
So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet
letter, and taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among
the withered leaves.... The stigma gone, Hester heaved a deep,
lon_g sigh, in which the burden of shame and anguish departed
from her spirit. 0 exquisite relief! ... By another impulse she
took off the formal cap that confined her hair; and down it fell
upon her shoulders, dark and rich.... There played around her
mouth and beamed out of her eyes, a radiant and tender smile,
that seemed gushing from the very heart of womanhood. A crim–
son flush was glowing on her cheeks, that had been long so pale.
Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her beauty, came
back from what men call the irrevocable past, and clustered.
themselves, with her maiden hope and a happiness before un–
known, within the magic circle of this hour.
This unregenerate temptress knows her power, but in the end
Dimmesdale cheats her of her triumph by publicly confessing his
sin on the scaffold; and that, of course, is
his
triumph. This thin–
skinned clergyman is the ancestor of all those characters in Henry
