simplest
manhood's honor to all womankind, to Flora, to Anna herself, this
knowledge should come from any other human tongue rather than from his.
From Anna he needed no explanation. That most mysteriously she should
twice have defaulted as keeper of sacred treasure; that she stood long
accused, by those who would most gladly have scouted the charge, of
leanings to another suitor, a suitor in the blue, and of sympathies,
nay, services, treasonous to the ragged standards of the gray; that he
had himself found her in the enemy's lines, carried there by her own
steps, and accepting captivity without a murmur, ah, what were such
light-as-air trials of true love's faith while she was still Anna
Callender, that Anna from whom one breath saying, "I am true," would
outweigh all a world could show or surmise in accusation?

And Anna: What could she say after what she had seen? Could she tell
him--with Flora, as it were, still in his arms--could she explain that
she had been seeking him to cast herself there? Or if she stood mute
until he should speak, what could he say to count one heart-throb
against what she had seen? Oh, before God! before God! it was not
_jealousy_ that could make her dumb or deaf to either of them. She
confessed its pangs. Yes! yes! against both of them, when she remembered
certain things or forgot this and that, it raged in her heart, tingled
in the farthest reach of her starved and fever-dried veins. Yet to God
himself, to whom alone she told it, to God himself she protested on her
knees it did not, should not, could not rule her. What right had she to
give it room? Had she not discerned from the beginning that those two
were each other's by natural destiny? Was it not well, was it not
God-sent to all three, that in due time, before too late, he and
she--that other, resplendent she--should be tried upon each other alone
--together? Always hitherto she, Anna, had in some way, some degree,
intervened, by some chance been thrust and held between them; but at
length nature, destiny, had all but prevailed, when once more
she--stubbornly astray from that far mission of a city's rescue so
plainly hers--had crashed in between to the shame and woe of all, to the
gain of no cause, no soul, no sweet influence in all love's universe.
Now, meeting Hilary, what might she do or say?

One thing! Bid him, on exchange or escape--if Heaven should grant the
latter--find again Flora, and in her companionship, at last unhind