In chapter 20 of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter, Hester and Dimmesdale plan to leave the colony on the fourth day en route for the Old World. Dimmesdale's decision to leave with Hester fills him with a sense of freedom from his place of torture, Boston. By creating false hopes for the future, he relinquishes his suffering from his guilt conscience. When Dimmesdale returns from the forest, he is not sure that the recent event with Hester and Pearl was really true. But seeing and Hester and Pearl revives his dreams of a better future together. Their meeting has changed him; he sees everything diff