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[Pretty Little Flower]

The system of her delusions had been the subject of an elaborate paper in
a scientific monthly, but long before that she and her husband had puzzled
it out for themselves. "Referential mania," Herman Brink had called it. In
these very rare cases the patient imagines that everything happening
around her is a veiled reference to her personality and existence. She
excludes real people from the conspiracy - because she considers herself to
be so much more intelligent than others. Phenomenal nature shadows her
wherever she goes. Clouds in the staring sky transmit to one another, by
means of slow signs, incredibly detailed information regarding her. Her
inmost thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly
gesticulating trees. Pebbles or stains or sun flecks form patterns
representing in some awful way messages which she must intercept.
Everything is a cipher and of everything she is the theme. Some of the
spies are detached observers, such are glass surfaces and still pools;
others, such as coats in store windows, are prejudiced witnesses, lynchers
at heart; others again (running water, storms) are hysterical to the point
of insanity, have a distorted opinion of her and grotesquely misinterpret
her actions. She must be always on her guard and devote every minute and
module of life to the decoding of the undulation of things. The very air
she exhales is indexed and filed away. If only the interest she provokes
were limited to her immediate surroundings - but alas it is not! With
distance the torrents of wild scandal increase in volume and volubility.
The silhouettes of her blood corpuscles, magnified a million times, flit
over vast plains; and still farther, great mountains of unbearable
solidity and height sum up in terms of granite and groaning firs the
ultimate truth of her being.