"I feel frightened when you don't tell me what's going on," he said to her. "It's the preparations for the last flight," she answered, "the flight of escape. He'll try to prevent us going together so that you should get lost. But it's better you shouldn't know too much," she added. "Trust me and have patience." "Oh, that's what you're so afraid of," he said, "_separation_!" He was very proud indeed of the long word, and said it over several times to himself. And the governess, looking out of the window at the fading sunlight, repeated to herself more than to him the word he was so proud of. "Yes, that's what I'm so afraid of--separation; but if it means your salvation----" and her sentence remained unfinished as her eyes wandered far above the tops of the trees into the shadows of the sky. And Jimbo, drawn by the sadness of her voice, turned towards the window and noticed to his utter amazement that he could _see right through her_. He could see the branches of the trees _beyond_ her body. But the next instant she turned and was no longer transparent, and before the boy could say a word, she crossed the floor and disappeared from the room. CHAPTER XVI PREPARATION Now that he was preparing to leave it, Jimbo began to realise more fully how things in this world of delirium--so the governess sometimes called it--were all terribly out of order and confused. So long as he was wholly in it and of it, everything had seemed all right; but, as he approached his normal condition again, the disorder became more and more apparent. And the next few hours brought it home with startling clearness, and increased to fever heat the desire for final escape. It was not so much a nonsense-world--it was too alarming for that--as a world of nightmare, wherein everything was distorted. Events in it were all out of proportion; effects no longer sprang from adequate causes; things happened in a dislocated sort of way, and there was no sequence in the order of their happening. Tiny occurrences filled him with disproportionate, inconceivable horror; and great events, on the other hand, passed him scathless. The spirit of disorder--monstrous, uncouth, terrifying--reigned supreme; and Jimbo's whole desire, though inarticulate, was to escape back into order and harmony again.