He went to his study and latched the door, letting his wife know he was not to be disturbed. Ruth was accustomed to doing as she was told and asked no questions even though she had taken note of his dark expression. She thought that he might be writing a sermon, for he often spoke in church, or perhaps he was drafting contracts for his shipping business, when in fact, he had locked himself away so that he might burn Maria’s letter in a brass bowl. The smoke was foul and red, and yet it made him feel something, a rush of desire, what he’d experienced in the tiled courtyard in Curaçao, the raw emotions of a reckless fool. He sat there with a throbbing headache, sprawled in a leather chair that had once belonged to his father. He knew that men must pay for their mistakes, for even men who tried to do good in the world were touched by original sin. Wicked actions sprang from a few moments of weakness in the face of the sinful ways of the world and all its indecent enchantments. Women could destroy men, he was sure of it, as Eve had tempted Adam. This was the reason women were not allowed to speak in church. To merely look upon them could cause vile thoughts, and soon enough such thoughts could become deeds. Hathorne believed that God and his angels moved through the mortal world, but the devil walked among them as well.

That night he fully admitted to himself that he had erred and veered onto a dark and unexpected path. Hathorne made no more excuses. He had sinned. He fell into a sort of madness as the two sides of him warred, the one who was the man who swam with a turtle, the other his father’s son. He stood at the window, looking into the dark. Halfway through the night, when the stars had filled the sky, Hathorne considered breaking faith with everything and everyone he had ever known and imagined taking Maria and their child back to Curaçao. But those treacherous thoughts lasted for only an hour or two, a heedless period of sin and lust, during which time he forgot he was a man with a family and a duty to the world in which he lived. Hathorne went to the shed and beat himself until his back was bloody and he gasped with the pain he’d inflicted upon his flesh. He could not do as he pleased. This wasn’t the land of the turtles and rose-colored birds, but a world whose only palette was black and white, where it was hard to think or move or breathe, and sleep was often impossible, for with sleep came dreams, and that was something he must avoid.