Love story and all that.

I have once been told about the story of the soldier and the princess who also happens to be told by Alfredo in Cinema Paradiso to the young boy. The soldier asked the princess to marry him but she had a condition. He must wait outside her castle for one hundred days, and during those days she would decide if she'll marry him or not, through opening the window in her room.

He stood outside the castle, under her windows. He withstand rain, heat and exhaustion and he never complained. But the evening of ninety-ninth day, he went away.

I haven't really understand why the soldier left before. My prof told me that it's because the soldier willingly embrace the that love last only through illusion. That the soldier would be happier if he dwell on his imagination of love and facing the reality would only destroy the beauty in it. I remembered "Dead Stars" by Paz Benitez. Alfredo, for eight years, was happy because he thought Julia Salas still loves him. But the moment he faced reality, he was disheartened to know that Julia Salas' love faded. I personally like the image of the "stars" in that short story. Alfredo, for eight years, was only seeing the light that has been given by the love of Julia Salas, but at the present, in reality, there was no love anymore. Indeed it is metaphysical, knowing the nature of stars. The light has traveled light years before it reached the Earth, and so the moment we see the light above the sky, the star that gave those light is already dead. Maybe if the soldier didn't leave, he might have faced the same reality that Alfredo experienced. I even argue with my professor that isn't that cowardice? Why should one just live in an imagined reality and just having the illusion that the girl loves him? How can he develop his own individuality by just living in the illusion and not setting forth to experience another horizon?

But now I wonder, if the story can only be viewed like that. What if the soldier left because he understood for ninety-nine days that he did not love the princess and he just wanted to posses her, that is why he left? What if in ninety-nine days he had known what love is and it is not just getting the girl he desires? That he realized that his love does not really exist, because all he ever wanted is to posses the girl?