The two grow up as neighbors, with a gate between the backyards, and play at Mass: she served as sacristan and the host was always a sweet. But Bentinho only discovers that he loves Capitu at fifteen, after hearing José Dias's denunciation. On the veranda he asks himself: "So then I loved Capitu, and Capitu loved me?"
Capitu seems to know before him. She writes the two names on the backyard wall and, on learning that he will be sent to the seminary, devises a plan. Days later, when he sees her combing her hair, Bentinho gazes at her for a long time and finds her eyes "of undertow." When he braids her hair, the two kiss for the first time.
Before he goes to the seminary, the two swear, beside the well in the backyard, that they will marry "come what may," in a formula that Capitu rewrites so that it obliges them to marry, and not merely to wait. The parting has another kiss. The courtship continues in the Saturday visits, when Bentinho comes from the seminary.