At times Djuna's detachment, her self-protective numbness would be annihilated by Rango, as when he said once: "We are killing her."

"We are killing her?" echoed Djuna, bewildered and shocked.

"Yes, she said once that it was my unfaithfulness which made her ill."

"But unfaithful to what, Rango? She was not your wife, she was your sick child, long before I came. It was understood between you that your relationship was fraternal, that sooner or later you would need a woman's love..."

"Zora didn't mind when I had just a desire for a woman, a passing desire... But I gave you more than that. That's what Zora cannot accept."

"But Rango, she told me that she was happy and secure with our relationship, because she felt protected by both of us, she knew I would not take you away from her, she said she had gained two loves and lost nothing..."

"One can say such things, and yet feel betrayed, feel hurt..."

Rango convinced Djuna that their love must be atoned for. Even if Zora had always been ill, even as a child, even though their love protected her, yet they must atone...atone...atone. Never enough devotion could make up for what pain they caused her... Not enough to rise early in the morning to market for tempting foods for Zora, never enough to dress her, to answer her every whim, to surrender Rango over and over again.

Djuna fell into an overwhelming, blind, stupefying devotion to Zora. She became the sleeping dreamer seeking nothing but one brief moment of fiery joy with Rango, and then atoning for it the rest of the time.

Rango would ring her bell and call her out during the night to watch Zora while he went for medicines.

The sleeping dreamer Djuna walked up a muddy hill on a rainy afternoon to the hospital bringing Zora her winter coat, so divested and stripped of her possessions that her father was beginning to notice it and demanded explanations: "Where is your coat? Why aren't you wearing stockings? You're beginning to dress like a tramp recently. Is this the influence of your new friends? Who are you associating with?"

Rango's grateful kisses over her eyelids were the blinding, drugging hypnosis, and she let her father believe that she was "fancying herself a bohemian now," that she was playing at being poor.

That afternoon at the hospital Rango left her alone with Zora. The moment he left the room Zora said: "Reach for that bottle on the shelf. It's a disinfectant. Pour some here in the bassinet. The nurse is stingy with it. She measures only a few drops. She doesn't want me to get well. She's saving the stuff. And I know more of it would cure me."

"But Zora, this stuff is strong. It will burn your skin. You can't use a lot of it. The nurse isn't trying to economize."

An expression of utter maliciousness came into Zora's eyes: "You want me to die, don't you? So you can live with Rango. That's why you won't give me the medicine."