Gurgel came back to the living room and told Capitu that his daughter was calling for her. I got up quickly and could not keep my composure: I fixed my eyes on the chairs. For her part, Capitu got up naturally and asked him if the fever had got worse.
“No,” he said.
Capitu was not in the least startled; there was no air of mystery about her; she turned round to me, and asked me to give her regards to my mother and cousin Justina, and that she would see me soon; she held out her hand to me and went off down the corridor. All my envy went with her. How could she control herself so easily when I could not?
“She’s quite a young lady,” observed Gurgel, looking at her too.
I murmured in agreement. It was true: Capitu was growing by leaps and bounds, her figure was filling out, and she was fast taking on new strength and energy: in her mind and spirit, the same thing was happening. She was a woman inside and out, to left and right, a woman from every side, from top to toe. This burgeoning seemed to be taking place more quickly, now that I did not see her every day; every time I came home I found her taller, with a fuller figure; her eyes seemed to have a new reflectiveness, and her mouth a new air of authority. Gurgel, turning to the wall, where there hung the portrait of a girl, asked me if I thought Capitu was like the portrait.
One of my habits in life has always been to agree with the probable opinion of whoever is speaking to me, so long as it doesn’t offend or irritate, or otherwise obtrude itself on me. Before looking to see if Capitu really was or was not like the portrait, 1 replied yes. Then he said that it was a portrait of his wife, and that people who had known her said the same thing. He, too, thought that they had similar features, principally the forehead and the eyes. As for their temperaments, they were identical: like sisters.
“And to top it all, her friendship with Sanchinha; even her mother was no closer to her … Life produces these strange resemblances.”