[…]  As I have said, I spent hours gazing at the tree, to the great surprise of the nuns and the servants in the hospital, who said they had never seen a quieter patient than me.  In reality I was not quiet, merely I was closely occupied with the only thing that truly interested me at that moment, the contemplation of the tree.  I had no thoughts, I simply wondered when and how I had recognized the reality of the tree, had recognized, in other words, its existence as an object which was different from myself, had no relationship with me, and yet was there and could not be ignored.  Evidently something had occurred just at the moment when I hurled myself off the road in my car; something which, to put it plainly, might be described as the collapse of an insupportable ambition.  I now contemplated the tree with infinite complacency, as though to feel it different from myself and independent of me were the only thing that gave me pleasure.  But I knew that chance alone had willed that the tree would be the object of my contemplation; the plaster casing compelled me to lie on my back and forced me to look through the window of my room.  Any other object, I realized, would have provided me with the same kind of contemplation, the same feeling of infinite complacency. 

And indeed I began to think of Cecilia again, I was aware of the same thing happening to me as when I gazed at the tree through the window.  […]