These lapses became with time more frequent, as well as of longer duration; and with them the boy noticed that the longing to escape became once again intense. He wanted _to get home_, wherever home was; he experienced a sort of nostalgia for the body, though he could not remember where that body lay. But when he asked the governess what this feeling meant, she only mystified him by her answers, saying that every one, in the body or out of it, felt a deep longing for their final _home_, though they might not have the least idea where it lay, or even to be able to recognise, much less to label, their longing. His normal feelings, too, were slowly returning to him. The Older Self became more and more submerged. As he approached the state of ordinary, superficial consciousness, the characteristics of that state reflected themselves more and more in his thoughts and feelings. His memory still remained a complete blank; but he somehow felt that the things, places, and people he wanted to remember, had moved much nearer to him than before. Every day brought them more within his reach. "All these forgotten things will come back to me soon, I know," he said one day to the governess, "and then I'll tell you all about them." "Perhaps you'll remember me too then," she answered, a shadow passing across her face. Jimbo clapped his hands with delight. "Oh," he cried, "I should like to remember you, because that would make you a sort of two-people governess, and I should love you twice as much." But with the gradual return to former conditions the feelings of age and experience grew dim and indefinite, his knowledge lessened, becoming obscure and confused, showing itself only in vague impressions and impulses, until at last it became quite the exception for the child-consciousness to be broken through by flashes of intuition and inspiration from the more deeply hidden memories. For one thing, the deep horror of the Empty House and its owner now returned to him with full force. Fear settled down again over the room, and lurked in the shadows over the yard. A vivid dread seized him of the _other door_ in the room--the door through which the Frightened Children had disappeared, but which had never opened since. It gradually became for him a personality in the room, a staring, silent, listening thing, always watching, always waiting. One day it would open and he would be caught! In a dozen ways like this the horror of the house entered his heart and made him long for escape with all the force of his being. But the governess, too, seemed changing; she was becoming more vague and more mysterious. Her face was always sad now, and her eyes wistful; her manner became restless and uneasy, and in many little ways the child could not fail to notice that her mind was intent upon other things. He begged her to name the day for the final flight, but she always seemed to have some good excuse for putting it off.