Djuna was moved by this courage, the courage to meet death with one's hair combed, and this gentle smile issuing from centuries of conviction that a woman must be pleasing to all eyes, even to the eyes of death.

When she reached Zora's bed she was faced with the very opposite, an utter absence of courage, although Zora was less ill than the other woman.

"The soup is not thin enough," said Zora. "It should have been strained longer." And she laid it aside and shook her head while Djuna and Rango pleaded that she should eat it anyway for the sake of gaining strength.

Her refusal to eat caused Rango anxiety, and Zora watched this anxiety on his face and savored it.

He had brought her a special bread, but it was not the one she wanted.

Djuna had brought her some liver concentrate in glass containers. Zora looked at them and said: "They are not good. They're too dark. I'm sure they're not fresh and they will poison me."

"But Zora, the date is printed on the box, the drugstore can't sell them when they're old."

"They're very old, I can see it. Rango, I want you to get me some others at La Muette drugstore."

La Muette was one hour away. Rango left on his errand and Djuna took the medicine away.

When they met in the evening Rango said: "Give me the liver medicine. I'll take it back to the drugstore."

They walked to the drugstore together. The druggist was incensed and pointed to the recent date on the box.

What amazed Djuna was not that Zora should give way to a sick woman's whims, but that Rango should be so utterly convinced of their rationality.

The druggist would not take it back.

Rango was angry and tumultuous, but Djuna was rebelling against Rango's blindness and when they returned to the houseboat she opened one of the containers and before Rango's eyes she swallowed it.

"What are you doing?" asked Rango with amazement. "Showing you that the medicine is fresh."

"You believe the druggist and not Zora?" he said angrily.

"And you believe in a sick person's whim," she said.

Zora was always talking about her future death. She began all her conversations with: "When I die..." Rango was maintained in a state of panic, fearing her death, and lived each day accordingly: "Zora is in grave danger of death," he would say, to excuse her demands upon his time.

At first Djuna was alarmed by Zora's behavior, and shared Rango's anxieties. Her gestures were so vehement, so magnified, that Djuna believed they might be those of a dying woman. But as these gestures repeated themselves day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, Djuna lost her fear of Zora's death.

When Zora said: "I have a burning sensation in my stomach," she made the gestures of a person writhing in a brasier of flames.