Dom Casmurro 21.68 · 21.68

The 'passados alguns instantes' is not filler; it is the sound of Bento gathering nerve. He has let Justina spend herself on José Dias, and only now, in the lull, does he steer toward the thing he actually wants. The delay marks a calculation — the boy is already learning to time a question, to let the ground settle before planting his own interest in it.

Machado gives the narrator the initiative here, a rare active verb after passages of listening. Bento the child is testing whether Justina might be recruited to his cause against the seminary. The whole quiet chapter has been maneuvering toward this opening, and the pause before he speaks is the hinge on which he turns from listener to petitioner.

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