Kissing as he had never kissed her.

She stood and watched, her heart breaking, her world shattering around her.

She drew back behind a great oak, although it was needless. They were beyond noticing her or anything else. She heard him say,

‘I’m sorry, my darling. I had no right to do this when I have nothing to offer you.’

‘Why can’t we be happy?’ That was Crystal’s voice. ‘Don’t you love me?’

‘You know I love you,’ he said, almost violently. ‘I didn’t know I could feel like this. If I had-’

He stopped. Joanna listened, her heart beating madly. If he had…

‘If you’d met me first, you wouldn’t have proposed to Joanna, would you?’

‘Never,’ he said hoarsely.

‘Don’t you want to marry me, my darling?’

‘Don’t ask me that.’

‘But I must ask it,’ she persisted in her soft, enticing voice. ‘If we’re going to lose each other, at least give me honesty.’

‘All right, I want to marry you,’ he said in a fierce, passionate voice. ‘I can’t, but neither can I stop loving and wanting you. You’re there with me every moment, night and day, waking or sleeping.’

‘Then how can you cast me aside?’

‘Because I have made promises to Joanna. My darling, I beg you to understand, I must keep those promises.’

‘Why? She doesn’t love you any more than you love her.’

‘But we’re a few days from our wedding. How can I humiliate her in front of the world?’

‘Gustavo, have you thought of the future? All those years tied to a woman you don’t love. How will you endure them?’

The silence that followed froze Joanna to the soul. Just a few seconds, but enough to make her feel that she was dying. At last his answer came in a voice that was bleak with despair.

‘I’ll survive, somehow.’