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Chapter 13

Another View of Hester

In her late singular interview with Mr. Dimmesdale,

Hester Prynne was shocked at the condition to which she found the clergyman reduced.

His nerves seemed absolutely destroyed.

His moral force was a based into more than childish weakness.

It groveled, helpless on the ground, even while his intellectual faculties

retained their pristine strength, or had perhaps acquired a morbid energy,

which disease only could have given them.

With her knowledge of a train of circumstances hidden from all others,

she could readily infer that, besides the legitimate action of his own conscience,

a terrible machinery had been brought to bear, and was still operating on Mr. Dimmesdale's

well-being and repose. Knowing what this poor fallen man had once been,

her whole soul was moved by the shattering terror with which he had peeled to her,

the outcast woman for support against his instinctively discovered enemy.

She decided moreover that he had aroused her utmost aid.

Little accustomed in her long seclusion from society to measure her ideas of right and wrong,

by any standard external to herself, Hester saw, or seemed to see,

...