“I love you, Tessa, and I have loved you, almost since the moment I met you.”

“I did it because I love you!" he half-shouted, and then, as if registering the shocked look her face, he said in a more subdued voice, "I love you, Tessa, and I have loved you, almost since the moment I met you.”

“I do not wish you other than you are, Tessa. You are what you are, and I love you.”

“I have wanted to do this," he said, "every moment of every hour of every day that I have been with you since the day I met you. but you know that. You must know. Don't you?”

“It's too late," she said."Don't say that." His voice was half a whisper. "I love you, Tessa. I love you.”

“I want you to be happy, and him to be happy. And yet when you walk that aisle to meet him and join yourselves forever you will walk an invisible path of the shards of my heart, Tessa. I would give over my own life for your happiness. I thought perhaps that when you told me you did not love me that my own feelings would fall away and atrophy, but they have not. They have grown every day. I love you now more desperately, this moment, than I have ever loved you before, and in an hour I will love you more than that.”

“Then, if you love him," he said quietly, "please, Tessa, don't tell him what I just told you. Don't tell him that I love you.”