Hester and Pearl — The Scarlet Letter

The old physician takes his leave and stoops away along the shore, beard almost touching the ground, an herb or a root going into the basket as he goes. Pearl has been at the water. She comes back to a mother who has just been told she may break the oath, and the child sees the change before she is given a reason for it.

Pearl asks the question she has asked in other forms and now asks outright: why does the minister keep his hand over his heart? Hester, who has borne the girl's wild talk for years, answers with a sharpness she has not allowed herself. Hold thy tongue. Do not tease me, or I shall shut thee into the dark closet. The threat is new. The question is not.

The closet is a door she would rather not open, and she has just opened a worse one by deciding that Dimmesdale must be told who sleeps in his house. Pearl's question follows her off the beach because the child has already noticed the gesture the town calls piety. The permission to break the oath and the child's question arrive in the same hour. She still does not answer the question.