Leaping Imagination

Hi, how are you?
Could someone please help me see what "a leaping imagination" is? The expression appeared in the following, excerpted from a book I'm reading in which a son struggles with his father, a widower with Asperger's syndrome. Is it an imagination that comes in mind out of the blue without intention, you might experience when you are alone in a quiet setting?

I knew I'd never know, and I had no intention of delving further. But with a leaping imagination in a quiet house, I could envision a quiet man who struck up a conversation about his rare coin collection with a poor young waitress at a diner, a woman who spent her evenings lying in bed and dreaming of a better life.

Hiro/ Sendai, Japan