Dom Casmurro 12.71 · 12.71

The little pause is everything. 'Depois de certa hesitação' — after a certain hesitation — marks the instant before Bento says something gallant, and the hesitation shows him searching for the right words, weighing whether to risk the compliment forming in his mind. Machado slows the sentence to catch a boy on the verge of tenderness.

Hesitation is deeply characteristic of Bento, the temperament that will define him: he pauses, he hangs back, he does not act on impulse the way Capitú does. Even paying her a lovely compliment, he must first stop and gather himself. In the courtship this is charming bashfulness; in the marriage it becomes the fatal irresolution that lets others — José Dias, his own suspicion — decide things for him. The pause here is sweet, the prelude to a graceful line. But it is also, in miniature, the hesitating man whose inability to speak or act plainly will help ruin the love he is about to praise.

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