[30] A WISH FULFILLED

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'being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage'

'being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage'

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"It takes a lot to astonish me. Well played. You've managed it." Winifred shook her head slowly. "Since you've been so irrepressibly cavalier with my heart, I feel I have a right to ask: Just how long have you known that you never intended to marry me?"

"This is all as confusing to me as it is to you." Gilbert sighed. 

"Unlikely." She doubted. 

 "I care about you very much--" Gilbert began. 

"But not as much as for a certain someone?" She questioned. "Did she argue bitterly that some childhood promise was implied? Did she beg you, weeping?"

"I'm so sorry, Winnie. It was never, ever my intention to do you harm." Gilbert defended. 

"I'm just so...Especially after your talk with my father the other night and...God, my mother was so sure, she's set a meeting with the minister, she's engaged a decorator to redo the Paris flat..." Cried the woman. "It's all so humiliating."

"Why on earth did you lead me on and make me believe that you loved me? Can you answer me that?!" She questioned.

 "You can only know something when you know it." Gilbert stated. "Not a minute before. The minute I knew my heart for sure, I came to you to reveal it." He assured.

"Wouldn't it have been worse if I'd discovered this a week from now? Or a year?" He inquired. 

Winifred sighed. "So...When's the happy day?" She wondered.

 "I don't have plans to marry." Gilbert responded.

Winifred looked to him in shock. "Now that tops all." She scoffed. "This is the most confounding price of information yet."

"She doesn't have feelings for me." Gilbert admitted.

 "Unrequited?" Winifred breathed. "I'm being thrown over for an unrequited love? You won't even settle for me! My God!" She shouted.

"Settle for you?" Gilbert huffed. "Winnie...You are exceptional. You deserve so much more than...being settled for." He explained. "Please don't for a minute think that you deserve anything less than a loving partner whose heart and gaze are unwavering."

Winifred sobbed, staring down at the floor. Gilbert reached for her hand in comfort.

***
"I failed. I failed. I failed."

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