It was night and they sat together in the room of the mirrors looking out into the quiet dark. The lights of the ships were twinkling far off, and a broad moonlight floated translucent on the bay. She wore her evening dress and jewels, with a bandeau about her beautiful brow, rimmed with pearls and inscribed with his name. Sir William had fallen asleep for sheer exhaustion in his study, and Nelson’s face was haggard with fatigue. Some officers were still in the next room discussing the events of Naples and the near sailing of the Fleet.
“A wonderful, wonderful time it has been,” she said, leaning on the window-sill, the moonlight and the low lamplight fighting for her loveliness. “Oh, Nelson, it was the greatest time of my life. There can never be such another.”
“And it was all Emma’s doings!” he said, looking into her eyes. He had taken to calling her by her name as Sir William always did in speaking of her to him. It had come to be an openly acknowledged friendliness.
“My doing? No. The world’s doing. You have the world at your feet. It rings with your honoured name.”
“You put it there!” he said, and clasped her hand. “We can’t tell it wholly as yet for the Queen’s sake, but whether I live or die, the world shall know one day that the Nile was Emma’s battle. Not a gun would have been fired but for my friend.”
“Ah, you say that now”—her eyes were like moonlight themselves, moonlight-brimmed, soft, mysterious—“but you leave in a few days, and you will forget. You will go back to Norfolk and be so happy with your wife that all these days together will seem like a dream.”
“I shall never forget,” he said steadily. “There is not a thought I can think in future but is inspired by you, bound up with you. You are the most wonderful woman I ever met.”
“Your wife?”
“My wife is all that is valuable. I honour the ground she walks on. She is a wife to make a fireside home. But you—God knows what you are—you dazzle me. Honour. That is you. Courage. You again. Wisdom, daring—all, all are you. I can’t tell you from England in my thoughts. You inspire me.”
She turned and looked at him with moonlight eyes.