He felt a mixture of relief and regret as he walked away from her. After all they'd been through together, the joys and sorrows, he'd never anticipated that it would end like this. He'd wanted her from the moment he'd seen her, and everyone who knew Rhett Butler knew that whatever he wanted, he eventually got, one way or another.
Except the heart of Scarlett O'Hara. That had always belonged to Ashley. Rhett himself had always known that it was a lost cause, that Ashley would never belong to Scarlett, that they were too different, that even if she did manage to get him, that she'd never be happy with the weak, mild-mannered, head-in-the-clouds dreamer. Not with her wild heart, her indomitable spirit. The two of them would have gone together like oil and water.
But Rhett himself knew that he could have given her so much more, everything she ever could have dreamed of, her heart's dearest desires. They could have been so happy together, if only she'd been able to let go of her hopeless dreams of Ashley. Year after year, he'd kept hoping that she'd come to her senses at last, that she'd see that the two of them were meant to be together. Yet she'd thrown chance after chance away, until there was nothing left to do but to cut his losses and move on.
Yet the look in her eyes as he'd left, the scared, vulnerable little girl who existed behind the devil-may-care exterior, the true Scarlett whom he'd always known was there inside her, that had never failed to move him, and even now, when all hope had been exhausted, he couldn't help but feel a small flicker of compassion when he saw it. As he returned to her from time to time to keep the gossip down, would he really be able to keep the old feelings from resurfacing? Time would tell.