The minister of Milford, Mr. Hooper, is supposed to be soon married, but his marriage will never take place. His fiancee, Elizabeth, feels that "it should be her privilege to know what the black veil concealed," and so she is the only person in the village who dares to approach Mr. Hooper and inquire directly.
She first asks him to take the veil off and let her see his face, but he will not. He...
The minister of Milford, Mr. Hooper, is supposed to be soon married, but his marriage will never take place. His fiancee, Elizabeth, feels that "it should be her privilege to know what the black veil concealed," and so she is the only person in the village who dares to approach Mr. Hooper and inquire directly.
She first asks him to take the veil off and let her see his face, but he will not. He says, "'this veil is a type and a symbol, and I am bound to wear it ever, both in light and darkness, solitude and before the gaze of multitudes [...]. No mortal eye will see it withdrawn." He refuses her request to see his face, even one more time, for he says that no one in the world, even her -- his most beloved -- can come behind the veil.
Elizabeth tells him what rumors are circulating in the village about him -- that he has committed some terrible, hidden sin that he longs to conceal -- and he asks, "'If I cover my face for sorrow, there is cause enough, [...] and if I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do the same?'" It is this response that helps Elizabeth to understand what the veil symbolizes, and "her eyes were fixed insensibly on the black veil, when, like a sudden twilight in the air, its terrors fell around her." She comes to understand that that the veil symbolizes the secret sin that every mortal has and feels compelled to hide from everyone else. Her knowledge that she will always be separated from her future husband by both this secret sin as well as its symbolic reminder in the form of the terrible veil is too much for her, and she abandons him.
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