"Your body goes to sleep, but you don't," she explained.
"Oh, I see." His head was whirling. "And my body—my real body——"
"Is lying asleep—unconscious they call it—in the night-nursery at home. It's sound asleep. That's why you're here. It can't wake up till you go back to it, and you can't go back to it till you escape—even if it's ready for you before then. The bed is only for you to rest on, for you can rest though you can't sleep."
Jimbo stared blankly at the governess for some minutes. He was debating something in his mind, something very important, and just then it was his Older Self, and not the child, that was uppermost. Apparently it was soon decided, for he walked sedately up to her and said very gravely, with her serious eyes fixed on his face, "Miss Lake, are you really Miss Lake?"
"Of course I am."
"You're not a trick of His, like the voices, I mean?"
"No, Jimbo, I am really Miss Lake, the discharged governess who frightened you." There was profound anxiety in every word.
Jimbo waited a minute, still looking steadily into her eyes. Then he put out his hand cautiously and touched her. He rose a little on tiptoe to be on a level with her face, taking a fold of her cloak in each hand. The soul-knowledge was in his eyes just then, not the mere curiosity of the child.
"And are you—dead?" he asked, sinking his voice to a whisper.