Why leave her solitude?
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E como é, perguntou o Dr. Geraldo, que vivendo ella assim arredada da sociedade, poude resolver-se a deixar a sua mysteriosa solidão, para vir a este baile tão publico e concorrido?...
And how is it, asked Dr. Geraldo, that living thus withdrawn from society, she could bring herself to leave her mysterious solitude, to come to a ball so public and crowded?
Geraldo's question is the shrewdest yet, and it points straight at the chapter's coming turn. If 'Elvira' has so carefully avoided society, how did she come to this 'baile tão publico e concorrido' — this most public and crowded of balls? The contradiction is real: a fugitive's every instinct is to stay hidden, and appearing before the whole cream of Recife is the last thing she should risk. The reader shares the doctor's puzzlement and feels the wrongness of it — Isaura, of all people, exposed in a bright and crowded room. Álvaro's answer, coming next, will reveal that he engineered it by a ruse, and the revelation lands with a small dread: the man who loves her has, out of love, drawn her into the open, the one place her safety could not afford her to be.
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