He, I am sure, did not and could not notice any change of expression; he saw my color vary, that was all, but his own feelings were sufficiently tumultuous to occupy him.
“Hester,” he said, “Hester, Hester!” He did not seem able to say any more, he only stood before me holding my hand very close, looking into my face with eyes in which everything else was veiled by his joy in seeing me again. I saw it was so—heaven help me—what a miserable torturer I was! my heart gave a bound of wild delight to feel my power over him still.
When I made no response, he forced me at last; already he was chilled, but he did not change his position—he held out both his hands, his arms rather, tears came to his eyes, and with a longing, wistful, entreating gaze he fixed them upon me. “Hester, Hester!” he said, “come, I have the only right to support you. In absence and solitude we have found out how it is that we are bound to each other, not by promise and vow alone, but by heart and soul. In strife or in peace we have but one existence. Hester, come back to me, come, let us not be sending our hearts over the world after each other; we cannot be separated, come back to me.”
How true it was, how true it was! but the heart that had been yearning for him, oh, so drearily, oh, so sadly, half an hour ago, was beating against my bosom now with miserable excitement, resisting him bitterly and to the death.
“Why should I come back?” I said; “has anything changed? are our circumstances different from what they were?”
“Yes,” he cried eagerly; “we have been apart, we have found out our true union, we have learned what it is to pine for a look, the very slightest, of the face most dear in the world to us. We have found how transitory, how poor all offences and resentments are, and how the original outlives and outlasts them. Hester, do I not speak the truth?”
I dared not contradict my own heart and say no, I dared not do it, everything he said was true.
“I do not mean you to suppose that it is self-denial on my part and a desire to test this, which has made me so slow of following you,” he continued, growing heated and breathless as he found that I did not answer; “I have but newly found out your retreat, Hester—found it out after long and diligent searching, which has given me many a sick heart for a month past. I need not describe the misery into which your flight plunged me; when you passed me on the road I was struck with a pang of fear, but I refused to entertain it. Think how I felt when I went home, and saw the pitying looks of the servants, and found your pitiless note upon my table. They told me you placed it there yourself Hester; and when I enter that fatal room, I sit idly thinking of you, trying to fancy where you stood, wondering, wondering if there was no truth nor mercy in your heart.”
The recollection of that moment rushed back on me as he spoke; he saw the convulsive trembling which came upon me; he heard the sob which I could not restrain; thus far I betrayed myself. I could not remember that unmoved; but when he bent over me with eager anxiety, I drew my hand away, and said I was quite well, quite well, I needed no support.
“Hester,” he said, in a tone of such tenderness that it almost overpowered me, “I know I am trying your strength severely, I know I am. I may be inexcusable, I may be hazarding your health with my vehemence; tell me if it is so, I will not speak another word, I will rather give up all my own hopes. God forbid that you should suffer for my violence; speak to me, say a word, Hester, tell me what I am to do.”