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The narrative now moves back, after the account of Simão's trial and sentence. The narrator asks his female readers directly: ‘And Teresa?’ He explains that he has neither forgotten her nor sacrificed her to lesser incidents. In his near darkness, Teresa continues to fly like the saints' heavenly bird. ‘You left more tears than blood, O daughter of sorrow!’ he tells her. They are worth more than the prayers of many devout women whose holiness impresses only hypocrites.
The account returns to the moment after Baltasar's death, before Simão's trial. Teresa had been carried from the church steps to the litter travelling to Porto. When she regained consciousness, she saw before her a maid named Constança. Tadeu had chosen her deliberately because she was not Teresa's friend. The maid began by repeating cold words of comfort. Yet Constança was eventually moved and wept with her. ‘You may speak, miss; no one is following us,’ she assured her. Only two footmen accompanied the litter; Baltasar's sisters had remained behind. Tadeu was not travelling with his daughter either. Constança said that Baltasar had died immediately after falling. On Tadeu's orders, the servants had tried to seize Simão. On hearing that he still had another pistol, Teresa asked joyfully whether he had escaped. ‘In the end, he gave himself up to the authorities,’ Constança replied. Teresa's hope collapsed, and the force of her sobs prevented her from hearing more. After calming down, she proposed escaping from the first inn where they stopped. She wished to return to Viseu only to bid Simão a final farewell. With difficulty, Constança convinced her that escaping would increase the dangers facing Simão. Perhaps Simão's father's influence might still save him, despite Tadeu's persecution. She abandoned the escape to protect Simão, not because she accepted her captivity.
Tearful, ill and sometimes fainting, Teresa reached Monchique on the fifth day of the journey. Faster messengers had already told the abbess what had happened. Her aunt, who was Tadeu's cousin, received Teresa kindly. She did so despite Tadeu's orders for strict confinement and no letters. The abbess heard a faithful account of everything from her niece. She then showed her, one by one, the letters Simão had written. Yet the abbess dried her tears and returned to religious austerity. Teresa no longer had the strength for another rebellion. Even so, she asked for permission to write. The abbess asked whom the letter was for, and Teresa did not answer. The nun warned that the letters might not even reach Simão's hands. Moreover, they might increase Tadeu's anger against them both. If she loved Simão, she should protect him and pretend that she had forgotten him. She should let her father hear a promise of obedience if he showed mercy to the prisoner. Teresa did not resist the advice and again smiled at the angel of death.
Every month, Tadeu wrote to his cousin, the abbess of Monchique. In those letters, he gave free expression to his vengeance. He repeated that the murderer would inevitably go to the gallows. Teresa did not read the letters, but she saw the nun's tears. Meanwhile, Teresa's fragile health was deteriorating rapidly. The doctors believed that she would die soon. When he was informed, Tadeu replied that he did not wish his daughter dead. Yet if God took her, he would die more peacefully and with his honour unstained. ‘Such was the spotless honour of the nobleman of Viseu!’ the narrator remarks. That honour claimed descent from the virtue of Socrates, Jesus and the martyrs. All of them, however, had preached charity and forgiveness. The nuns of Monchique surrounded Teresa with affection and pity. Nothing could relieve the burning illness that consumed her. She gave thanks through tears, but saw in their compassion proof that they considered her incurable.
A nun inadvertently told her that a friend at the Remédios convent in Lamego had said that Simão had been sentenced to death. Teresa shuddered and murmured: ‘And I am still alive!’ She asked whether the friend in Lamego could have a letter delivered to Simão. The nun agreed to help after consulting the abbess. The abbess believed that the final exchange between two dying people would harm neither this life nor eternity. Teresa wrote first; Simão read the letter fifteen days after the trial.
‘Simão, my husband, I know everything; death is with us,’ Teresa began. The word ‘husband’ expressed their promised spiritual union, not an existing legal marriage. Teresa said that she was writing without tears and had endured that agony for seven months. God had been good in sparing her from crime. The news of Simão's approaching death had explained why she was dying hour by hour. She recalled the dreams of happiness they had shared. She could not believe that their shared fate would end in that way. Eternity seemed dark to her because hope had guided her from Simão towards faith. She asked him to attach the final thread of his life to whatever hope he could find. She asked whether they would meet again in another world and whether God would allow her to behold him. She prayed and pleaded, but her faith weakened when she imagined Simão's final agony. Her own pains seemed gentle, for death costs less to a peaceful heart. The worst was the longing for the hopes that each had recognised in the other. If nothing existed beyond this life, dying would at least mean forgetting. Teresa also believed herself condemned and beyond help. ‘Follow me, Simão; do not long for life,’ she wrote. It was the fatalistic language of someone who believed him condemned, not an instruction to kill himself. Reason might tell him that he could have been happy if he had never met her. Even so, Teresa asked him to accept death and not repent. If there had been a crime, God's justice would forgive him for the anguish of prison. The final sentence remained unfinished: ‘...and in the final days, and in the presence of...’ The pen fell from her hand, and a long convulsion passed through her body. The thought of the gallows had interrupted her writing and almost ended her life. A nun entered to collect the letter because the post was about to leave. Teresa asked her to read and seal it because she herself could no longer do so.
For the next three days, Teresa did not leave her bed. Each hour, the nuns expected her to close her eyes for ever. ‘It is very hard to die,’ she sometimes said. The nuns offered her pious words to draw her thoughts away from the world. Teresa listened and asked: ‘But what is heaven without him, my God?’ The chaplain did not know whether heavenly joys resembled the false joys of earth. The narrator compares Teresa's final lucidity to features seen in some forms of consumption. It was a literary comparison, not a secure diagnosis of her illness. When they spoke of blessedness, Teresa argued clearly for the eternal union of souls. To her, those souls were already spouses in this world. Even the doctors marvelled at the persistence of that life. The abbess wrote to Tadeu, asking him to come and see his daughter before she died. The old man was moved by pity and perhaps also by paternal love. He decided to remove Teresa from the convent, still hoping to save her. Simão's transfer to the prisons of Porto gave him another reason to hurry.
Tadeu reached Porto as Simão's reply was being delivered to Teresa. The nun at Monchique had received it through her friend at the Lamego convent. ‘Do not leave me yet, Teresa; I no longer see the gallows or death,’ Simão wrote. He said that his father was protecting him and that salvation was possible. He asked her to bind the final threads of life to her heart. While he continued to say that he hoped, Teresa must prolong her agony. The following day, Simão would be taken to the prisons of Porto. There he would await a possible acquittal or commutation of the sentence. Life was everything, and he could love her even in exile. Everywhere there were sky, flowers and God. If Teresa lived, she would one day be free; the stone of the grave never rises. ‘Live, Teresa, live!’ he pleaded. Days earlier, he had imagined that Teresa's tears would wash the stains of the hanged man's blood from his face. That terrible nightmare had passed; now he could breathe in that hell. The executioner's rope no longer tightened around his throat in dreams. He was looking at the sky again and recognising the providence of the unhappy. The previous night, he had seen the stars of the secrets they shared during their separation. He had returned to life, his heart was full of hope, and he begged her not to die.
It was late at night when Teresa read the letter, sitting up in bed. She called Constança to help her dress and ordered the window to be opened. She pressed her face to the bars and gazed at the sea, which looked like a vast silver flame. The moon shone so brightly that it almost hid the stars Teresa was seeking. When she found them, she exclaimed: ‘Those are my stars, as pale as I am!’ She rose and begged God to let her live. Constança assured her that she would live, but asked her to avoid the river mist. Teresa said that she felt herself returning to life in that air and asked whether she might live a few more years. Simão would not die, would come to Porto the next day and might already have arrived. At first Constança thought that Teresa was delirious, but she did not contradict her. She asked whether Teresa had received a letter, merely to sustain that feverish happiness. Teresa read the reply to her, and Constança became convinced. Teresa asked whether she was Simão's enemy and invited her to pray. She imagined marrying him and taking Constança into their future household. Constança agreed, but asked whether Simão would manage to escape death. Teresa trusted that Domingos would save Simão and that the Virgin would unite them. Soon afterwards, she admitted that she had no strength left and that the doctor had stopped prescribing medicine. It seemed worse to die at that moment, when she had begun to hope again. That sudden joy was feverish and temporary; it had not cured Teresa. At last, she knelt before the devotional image she had brought from her room in Viseu. Teresa's mother and grandmother had also prayed before that compassionate face. Before dying, both women had fixed the final light of their gaze upon it.