After some time, I felt calm, but dejected. As I was stretched out on the bed, staring at the ceiling, I remembered my mother’s advice that I should not lie down after dinner to avoid congestion of the blood. I got up quickly, but I didn’t leave my room. Capitu was laughing less now, and was speaking in a lower voice; she must be upset at my having shut myself away, but even that did not move me.
I had no supper, and slept badly. On the following morning I felt no better: I felt different. My pain was now mixed with the fear that I had overstepped the mark, and had failed to examine the matter. Though my head was aching a little, I pretended I was worse than I was, so as not to have to go to the seminary, and so that I could speak to Capitu. She might be angry with me, she might no longer love me, and prefer the man on horseback. I wanted to resolve everything, hear her and judge her; she might have a defense and an explanation.
She had both. When she found out why I had shut myself away the previous day, she told me that I was doing her a grave injustice; she couldn’t believe that after our exchange of oaths, I could think her so fickle as to believe … And at this point she burst into tears, and made a gesture as if of separation; but I came to her straight away, took her hands and kissed them with such feeling and warmth that I felt them tremble. She wiped her eyes with her fingers, and I kissed them again, for themselves and for the tears; then she sighed, and shook her head. She confessed that she did not know the young man, any more than she knew others that passed by of an afternoon, on horseback or on foot. If he had looked at her, that was precisely the proof that there was nothing between the young man and her; if there had been, it would have been natural to dissemble.
“And what could there be, anyway, since he’s getting married?” she concluded.
“He’s getting married?”
He was getting married, and she told me to whom, to a girl from the Rua dos Barbonos. This reason convinced me more than any, and she felt it in my demeanor; but that did not stop her saying that, to prevent more misunderstandings, she would stop looking out of the window.
“No! no! No! I wouldn’t ask that of you!”
She consented to withdraw the promise, but she made another, and it was that at the first suspicion on my part, everything would be over between us. I accepted the threat, and swore that she would never have to carry it out: it was the first suspicion and the last.