'Though I must die'
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mas o que o senhor exige de mim, não posso, não devo fazel-o, embora deva morrer.
but what you demand of me, I cannot, I must not do, though I should die.
The plea ends where it began, on the one immovable point: 'não posso, não devo fazel-o, embora deva morrer.' The doubling — cannot, must not — separates incapacity from refusal: it is not that she lacks the power to yield but that she is bound by something higher not to. 'Devo' against 'devo', a duty to die weighed against a demand to submit, and she chooses the duty. Isaura has reduced the whole vast asymmetry of power between them to a single moral fact she controls absolutely: he can kill her, but he cannot make her do this. Death is not her threat here; it is her proof that some part of her remains ungoverned.
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