During all this time, Hester stood, statue-like, at the foot of the scaffold. If the minister’s voice had not kept her there, there would nevertheless have been an inevitable magnetism in that spot, whence she dated the first hour of her life of ignominy. There was a sense within her⁠—too ill-defined to be made a thought, but weighing heavily on her mind⁠—that her whole orb of life, both before and after, was connected with this spot, as with the one point that gave it unity.