As if in fear that Djuna should ask him to come with her, he said: "She cannot be left alone."

Djuna was silent. She could not divulge what she knew.

When she did protest against the excessive demands and whims of Zora, even gently, Rango would say: "I am between two fires, so you must help me."

To help him meant to yield to Zora, knowing that she would in the end destroy their relationship.

Every day Djuna suppressed her knowledge, her lucidity; Rango would have considered them an attack upon a defenseless Zora.

Noblesse oblige enforced silence, and all her awareness of the destruction being wreaked upon their relationship—when Zora was the greatest beneficiary of this relationship—only served to increase her suffering.

Zora had mysteriously won all the battles; Rango and Djuna could never spend a whole night together.

What corrodes a love are the secrets.

This doubt of Zora's sanity which she dared not word to Rango, which made every sacrifice futile, created a fissure in the closeness to Rango. A simple, detached understanding of this would have made Rango less enslaved, less anxious, and would have brought Djuna and Rango closer together, whereas his loyalty to all the irrational demands of Zora, her distorted interpretation of his acts as well as Djuna's, was a constant irritant to Djuna's intelligence and awareness.

The silence with which she accomplished her duties now became a gradual isolation in her emotions.

It was strange to be cooking, to be running errands, to be searching for new doctors, to be buying clothes, to be furnishing a new room for Zora, while knowing that Zora was working against them all and would never get well because her illness was her best treasure, was her weapon of power over them.

But Rango needed desperately to believe. He believed that every new medicine, every new doctor would restore her health.

Djuna felt now as she had as a child, when she had repudiated her religious dogmas but must continue to attend mass, rituals, kneel in prayer, to please her mother.

Any departure from what she believed he considered a betrayal of her love.

At every turn Zora defeated this battle for health. When she got a new room in the sun, she kept the blinds down and shut out air and light. When they went to the beach together up the river, her bathing suit, given to her by Djuna, was not ready. She had ripped it apart to improve its shape. When they went to the park she wore too light a dress and caught cold. When they went to a restaurant she ate the food she knew would harm her, and predicted that the next day she would be in bed all day.

She made pale attempts to take up her dancing again, but never when alone, only when Djuna and Rango were there to witness her pathetic attempts, and when the exertion would cause her heart to beat faster she would say to Rango: "Put your hand here. See how badly my heart goes when I try to work again."