The Scarlet Letter

It was whispered by those who peered after her that the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam along the dark passage-way of the interior.

After a time, at a hint from Roger Chillingworth, the friends of Mr. Dimmesdale effected an arrangement by which the two were lodged in the same house; so that every ebb and flow of the minister's life-tide might pass under the eye of his anxious and attached physician.

Nevertheless, time went on; a kind of intimacy, as we have said, grew up between these two cultivated minds, which had as wide a field as the whole sphere of human thought and study to meet upon;

an inarticulate breath, and here and there a word to indicate that all is understood;

strove to go deep into his patient's bosom, delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark cavern.

Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these.

and as he appeared when thrown amidst other moral scenery, the novelty of which might call out something new to the surface of his character.

It was as if a window were thrown open, admitting a freer atmosphere into the close and stifled study, where his life was wasting itself away, amid lamp-light, or obstructed day-beams, and the musty fragrance, be it sensual or moral, that exhales from books.

the occasional relief

which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front