As they talked she completed the square she had already begun, and then Djuna watched her rip apart her labor and quietly begin again.

"Djuna, I don't know if Rango told you, but Rango and I are like brother and sister. Our physical life...was over years ago. It was never very important. I knew that sooner or later he would love another woman, and I am glad it's you because you're kind, and you will not take him away from me. I need him."

"I hope we can be...kind to each other, Zora. It's a difficult situation."

"Rango told me that you never tried, or even mentioned, his leaving me. How could I not like you? You saved my life. When you came I was about to die for lack of care and food. I don't love Rango as a man. To me he is a child. He has done me so much harm. He just likes to drink, and talk, and be with friends. If you love him, I am glad, because of the kind of woman you are, because you are full of quality."

"You're very generous, Zora."

Zora leaned over to whisper now: "Rango is mad, you know. He may not seem so to you because he is leaning on you. But if it were not for you I would be out in the street, homeless. We've often been homeless, and I'd be sitting on my valises, out on the sidewalk, and Rango just waving his arms and helpless, never knowing what to do. He lets everything terrible happen, and then he says: 'It's destiny.' With his cigarette he set fire to our apartment. He was nearly burnt to death."

There was a book lying at the foot of her bed, and Djuna opened it while Zora was carefully unstitching all she had sewed before.

"It's a book about illness," said Zora. "I love to read about illness. I go to the library and look up descriptions of the symptoms I have. I've marked all the pages which apply to me. Just look at all these markings. Sometimes I think I have all the sicknesses one can have!" She laughed. Then looking at Djuna plaintively, almost pleadingly, she said: "All my hair is falling out."

When Djuna left that evening, Rango and she were no longer man and woman in a chamber of isolated love for each other. They were suddenly a trinity, with Zora's inexorable needs conducting all their movements, directing their time together, dictating the hours of separation.

Rango had placed Zora under Djuna's protection and her love for Rango had to extend in magnitude to include Zora.

Zora talked to Djuna. If it was Djuna who had planned to come to Zora and show the most exemplary devotion, she found herself merely passive before the friendliness of Zora.