“But I have you to help me,” she insisted, clinging to his hand as if for life. A pause—then very slowly:
“Emma, did that cub sicken you at me, or reveal your heart to you? Have you avoided me the last few days for love’s sake or fear?”
“Was I ever afraid?”
“Then it was love? You feared your own heart.”
Suddenly she flamed out glorious.
“I don’t fear my own heart. I love it because it loves my Nelson. No, how can we love each other too much? We love the same thing, glory and great deeds. We must love each other. But we will be true. I would not wrong my dear Sir William for all the wide world—no, not even for you that’s more to me than any world.”
“Good God—you’re right!” he cried. “We can love each other and let it drive us on to deeds that will make the world look and worship. Inspire me, for you’re mine, mine! But I will be true to my wife, and you to your good husband, and we’ll set an example of duty as well as of honour for all to see. My own, own Emma!”
He clasped her to his breast and drowned her in kisses—such kisses as had never yet touched her lips, and she should be a judge. His heart, his soul, his fiery honour, burnt in every one. And behind them stood Fate, and laughed cruelly in her sleeve at the old, impossible attempt to square the circle.
“We will make a compact,” he said solemnly at length. “To love each other till death, yet never to step an inch beyond the line we draw now. To aid each other in our war against these French devils, as comrades, not as lovers, but as man and woman who love honour better than their own sufferings. Swear it, my Emma; my own heart’s love.”
“I swear it,” she said, looking not at him but at the ground—and they sealed their compact with a last kiss that melted their souls in one. Or so it seemed to him.