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The Scarlet Letter: Dimmesdale

The Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale, a young minister of high native gifts, who had already wide eminence in his profession, was urged to exhort Hester to repentance and confession. Addressing her, he advised that she name her fellow-sinner even if he had to step from a high position to stand beside her, for it was better so than to hide a guilty heart through life. Hester shook her head, keeping her place upon the pedestal of shame with an air of weary indifference.

That night her child writhed in convulsions, and a physician, Mr. Roger Chillingworth, none other than the stranger Hester had noticed in the crowd, was called. Having eased the baby's pain, he turned and said: "Hester, I ask not wherefore thou hast fallen into the pit. It was my folly and thy weakness. What had I--a man of thought--to do with youth and beauty like thine? I might have known that in my long absence this would happen." "I have greatly wronged thee," murmured Hester. "We have wronged each other," he answered. "But I shall seek this man whose name thou wilt not reveal, and sooner or later he must be mine. I shall contrive nothing against his life. Let him live. One thing, thou that wast my wife, I ask. Thou hast kept his name secret. Keep likewise, mine. Let thy husband be to the world as one already dead, and breathe not the secret, above all to the man thou wottest of." "I will keep thy secret, as I have his."