which he had appealed to her — the outcast woman — for support against his instinctively discovered enemy. She decided, moreover, that he had a right to 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 — that there lay a responsibility upon her in reference to the clergyman, which she owned to no other, nor to the whole world besides. The links that united her to the rest of humankind — links of flowers, or silk, or gold, or whatever the material — had all been broken.

Here was the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break. Like all other ties, it brought along with it its obligations.